The year is 1949 in a small country village back in the mountains of West Virginia. Callie, a twelve-year-old girl lives with her family on a farm. They live off the main highway on a one-lane dirt road winding through the countryside. Teepee type haystacks fill the fields with beauty exploding along the way. Her family performs farm chores for a living. Her parents are Christians raising their children in the same manner. Callie is leafing through a catalog one day and spots a pair of white satin ballerina slippers, immediately falls in love with them, and decides she wants to become a ballet dancer. From that moment forward Callie lives in an imaginary state of becoming a dancer. One morning on a trek to her one-room schoolhouse Callie encounters a dangerous situation and tries to protect herself, returning home extremely ill. What causes Callie's illness? Will she ever get to dance in her magical white satin ballerina slippers?

Emily, a maturing teenage girl, lives in a small town in the hills of West Virginia. Her dad is a coal miner and money is scarce in their family. In fact, the entire town suffers for the same reason - a lack of money and just enough to make it from paycheck to paycheck. Being born into a family of poverty has caused Emily to be bitter with her family. She's so self-conscious of being poor that she actually becomes ashamed of her family and her home. She constantly daydreams of running away from home in hopes of finding a wealthy life. One morning Emily has a terrible fight with her mother. She leaves out the door in a rage without saying goodbye. On her way to school, as she approaches the forks in the road, she decides to run away from home. This decision drastically changes Emily's life...She finds herself a prisoner in a world of torture and sexual abuse with a constant desire to go back home, only to realize she is someone's "jailbait." Can Emily get herself out of this mess and come back home?