A widower juggles the roles of father, mother, breadwinner and ex-gang member, while coping with the death of his wife, and hoping to make the most of chance encounters with the woman who may be his missing piece. Or not.

SYNOPSIS:

Luther Page is a full-time chain-drugstore manager, and overtime parent in modern-day Leimert Park, in Los Angeles. He juggles life as a widowed father to two young children, Troy, his son, with designs on the rap game, and Deanna, just starting to recognize her own attractiveness, a daughter coping with adolescence, rage and loss.

That loss has been a shared experience. Luther still grapples with the memory of Audree, his wife and their mother, struck and badly injured in a car accident almost two years earlier ­-- an accident that happened minutes after she and Luther parted company, angry after an argument. Audree was on the mend for several weeks after the accident, recovering, bouncing back. Until that day of a headache that wouldn’t end. The day she went back in the hospital. The day before she died there, of complications arising from the accident. Luther’s mission is simple enough: Carve out a better quality of life for the kids and himself in the face of an increasingly volatile city, a place with sharper teeth than he remembered growing up Angeleno.

It’s a mission snarled by his own personal history: Twenty-some-odd years ago, Luther ran with one of the gangs in south L.A. Never arrested or convicted, he still harbors hard memories of that time: the crime, the danger, bad decisions he had a hand in, the cruelty he witnessed firsthand.

Luther’s past and its ability to come sneaking back into the present is distilled in Bernardo G, the leader of the Willowbrook Treys (Luther’s long-ago gang), and a man with a standing offer for Luther: Come back into the fold. It all complicates Luther’s process of making amends for some of his past, of being a model father responsible and eager to plan a future, one that might flourish, or falter, in a 21st-century heartbeat. He’s got friends and combative allies: Chris Redmond, his closest friend and almost diaper buddy, a sounding board constantly pushing Luther to “get back into life.” Rodrigo Fermin, once a gang member, now trying to maintain his own separation from a crazy past life. Co-workers Lisha Moses, an assistant manager with her own ideas about running the store; and Richie Cole, an aspiring actor trapped in life on aisle five.

And there’s that new occasional customer, Zhora, new to L.A. and the neighborhood, a woman with beauty, creativity and a rage to live, someone maybe just complicated enough to be all the simple things Luther needs: Love, joy, and partnership. Maybe. If the modern world, the city of L.A., and Luther Page don’t get in the way.