Abe Snopes is a Southern tenant farmer whose unrelenting and violent nature proves to be his undoing. Snopes sets his employer's barn on fire when he thinks he's been treated unfairly. His son, Sarty, is horrified. Snopes escapes justice for lack of proof, but he and his family are told to move on. No sooner do they move than Snopes is offended by his new rich employer. Torn between trying to win his father's acceptance and his aversion to what his...

Set in 1959, a band of young men, buddies since high school, gather at a local diner to share their escapades and make sense of their lives. As one by one they drift off to join the mainstream of life they still cling to their shared boyhood dreams.