Irene is a young housewife and mother who tries to raise her young family, love her husband and keep her home all the while studying her masters' degree. Mario, her husband, is a good man, but he's tied by convention. When she has a strange mishap one day, her domestic life is catapulted in a whirl of horror and violence that will tear the fabric of her very existence apart.

When Terri Hansen (Mary McDonnell) emerges from a fiery car crash as a widow, the local sheriff at first believes her account of the accident. But there's a snag in her story. Namely, a bullet in her dead husband. Just what did happen on that dark desert road? Through a series of telling flashbacks, we and the jury learn the bizarre truth. Randy Quaid and Sam Elliott costar in this riveting drama.

The story of three sisters and the men they marry: one is happily married but childless, the second promiscuously escapes an unhappy, loveless marriage, and the third is tortured by the mental cruelties inflicted by a domineering husband.