SYNOPSIS:

The idyllic opening shot highlights the atypical shyness and beauty of late 70’s Kansas: the dominating sunset and fields of grasses, the simple things and the stillness within looking outwardly as if one’s soul were turned inside out and expressed in nature. We see a very old but well kept farmhouse surrounded by acres of wheat fields. Inside, Violet Hayes, petite, graceful, prepares dinner. Her husband Pete Hayes enters and we see his very tan, kindly face. Their four year old daughter Fiona comes in; we can hear her first because she wears braces on her legs painted different colors as Fiona’s private and highly imaginative world is suffused with them. She’s dressed like she should fit in a dollhouse. The next day, Fiona's father dies in a combine explosion. Her oppressive mother educates her at home. Her mother dies when Fiona is eighteen. Fiona does not attend the funeral as she hasn’t left the house since she was four. Then we cut to present day. Fiona is now twenty six and still has not left the house. That being said, she has built a seemingly pleasant life around her confinement: her children’s books are successful with a solid following. An Internet affair – her first major emotional investment in love - turns dark and sour, driving her into a severe withdrawal. She tells her agent in New York she is going to kill Grace, the main character in her books. Todd Granger, an ambitious young agent at the firm, decides to fly out and meet her in person, confident he can get her writing again after just one meeting. He gets more than his charm can handle, and, challenged, stays, becoming immersed in Fiona’s world, and, through their gentle connection, begin to confront his unorthodox past as well as her own. Members of Fiona’s tiny Pentecostal Christian town are led by a fanatic pastor who sees Todd’s presence as a threat and a validation of Fiona as possessed, a whore to be cleansed. At the end, Fiona confronts all of it in her living room.