In Maridoches, Alabama, Hattie Bohannon is a widow working at Gert`s truck stop and trying to rebuilt her life via a relationship with the town sheriff. But when her daughter begins an affair with a married man who then confesses his sin in church, Hattie and her daughter are shunned by the town gossips, and even the truck stop where Hattie works is made into a kind of sin city by a group of crooked right-wingers who want to tear it down and put up a Christian steak house.