Walter Oakley and his wife, Ada, used the westward expansion of America to establish themselves as model citizens in the town of Telegraph, Texas. Now, they watch in despair as their children lurch from one crisis to another -- rum running, train-hopping outlaws, shattered dreams. With one child dead and another on the wrong side of the law, Walter and Ada struggle to keep their younger children on the straight and narrow. But trouble and temptation beckon as Prohibition and the Great Depression give way to the horrors of World War II. Will hope survive the chaos?