Young Jeremiah lives in a stable environment with loving foster parents until his troubled mother, Sarah, returns to claim him. Jeremiah is drawn into his mother's dangerous world of drugs, seedy hotels, strip joints, and changing lovers. Salvation comes in the form of the boy's ultrareligious grandparents, but Jeremiah's mother soon returns. Maternal love binds the pair together on the road until Sarah's desperate and depraved lifestyle consumes her.