After their father abruptly sells the beloved family-owned restaurant that has employed them for years, the charismatic McDermott boys - hot-tempered Brian (Quill), lovelorn Kit (Mulroney) and jokester Duncan (Astin) - find themselves at odds with their parents and each other.
Writer Paul Benjamin is nearly hit by a bus when he leaves Auggie Wren's smoke shop. Stranger Rashid Cole saves his life, and soon middle-aged Paul tells homeless Rashid that he wouldn't mind a short-term housemate. Still grieving over his wife's murder, Paul is moved by both Rashid's quest to reconnect with his father and Auggie's discovery that a woman who might be his daughter is about to give birth.
A retired ex-cop and private detective gets mixed up in murder when he is asked to deliver blackmail money and walks into a 20-year-old case involving the mysterious disappearance of an actress' former husband.
Novalee Nation is a 17-year-old Tennessee transient who has to grow up in a hurry when she's left pregnant and abandoned by her boyfriend on a roadside, and takes refuge in the friendly aisles of Wal-Mart. Eventually, some eccentric but kindly strangers 'adopt' Novalee and her infant daughter, helping them buck the odds and build a new life.