Follow the lives of a group of teenagers living in the upscale, star-studded community of Beverly Hills, California and attending the fictitious West Beverly Hills High School and, subsequently, the fictitious California University after graduation.

One unlucky evening, Louis Cropa, a part-time bookmaker, discovers that his restaurant has become a hotbed of conflicting characters. In addition to having to please a whiny food critic, Louis must fend off a hostile takeover from a pair of gangsters, to whom his sous-chef is in debt. Further, Louis has an argument with his son, the star chef, whose culinary creativity has brought success to the business.

When their abusive parents are killed in a car crash, twin sisters Rosie and Violet vow to run away to Kentucky in search of a better life. While on the road, the girls meet up with Pete, a drifter working as a grounds keeper on a derelict army base, who takes them in. While Violet falls for him, Rosie becomes increasingly angry and hostile, and the sisters' childhood bond is eventually destroyed forever.

When a sudden storm traps a college student from California in the Miller's farmhouse basement, in the dead geographic center of America, with Irma, her husband Dallas and their brooding 30-year-old son Billy, their dark secrets are revealed. This taut, well-crafted drama is a star turn for Blythe Danner, leading us on an intriguing path of family dysfunction and hidden tragedies. The Millers are trying to come to terms with the mysterious disappearance of their only daughter. Irma's delusions about the tragedy are further complicated by the arrival of the suspicious California coed.