Ten-year-old Jo spends her days along the Shenandoah River with her best friend Selma, fishing, scrapping for metal–surviving. But when her abusive junkie stepdad dies, Jo decides, Selma in tow, to dump the body, steal the car, and set off across the country in search of her real dad, a legendary folk singer in Los Angeles.

Emptied out in Los Angeles, a heartsick gambler from Kentucky decides to confront demons past after a run-in with a mercurial Hollywood drug dealer.