Inspired by John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress, the Lightly family struggles with a rebellious son, a selfish adopted daughter, an overworked mother and an out of work father. When they leave for a mountain park to decompress and try to rebuild their once joyful family, tragedy strikes and the Lightlys begin a fight for survival that challenges everything they know about themselves and their beliefs.
The Middle Eastern oil industry is the backdrop of this tense drama, which weaves together numerous story lines. Bennett Holiday is an American lawyer in charge of facilitating a dubious merger of oil companies, while Bryan Woodman, a Switzerland-based energy analyst, experiences both personal tragedy and opportunity during a visit with Arabian royalty. Meanwhile, veteran CIA agent Bob Barnes uncovers an assassination plot with unsettling origins.
Derek Vineyard is paroled after serving 3 years in prison for killing two African-American men. Through his brother, Danny Vineyard's narration, we learn that before going to prison, Derek was a skinhead and the leader of a violent white supremacist gang that committed acts of racial crime throughout L.A. and his actions greatly influenced Danny. Reformed and fresh out of prison, Derek severs contact with the gang and becomes determined to keep Danny from going down the same violent path as he did.
In old New South Wales a new bunch of convicts arrives including the little convict, young Toby Nelson. Consigned to a Government farm they are subjected to the cruelty of Sergeant Billy Langdon and Corporal Weazel Wesley. Toby escapes and flees into the Australian bush where he is saved from death by the aboriginal boy, Wahroonga. Together, with another escapee, the highwayman, Jack Doolan, and Wahroonga’s animal friends, they launch a spectacular mission to rescue the blacksmith, Big George, and Toby’s sister, Polly.
Steve Moore is sixteen and lives with his younger sister, mother Cheryl and her boyfriend John, in a modest house in Bakersfield, California. An abusive and often intoxicated man, John rules the household, and though his attacks on Steve result in emergency hospital visits, Cheryl's loyalty is to her boyfriend. To protect her relationship with John, she "ditches" her son, having him arrested and locked in a correctional "mental" facility, before coercing her older brother Burt, who lives in Hollywood, to take him. Steve quickly discovers that Burt cannot even provide temporary lodging, but an administrator at his new high school directs him to a shelter for runaway kids where he soon learns to navigate his way.
Teenage Lindsey McCabe loses her opportunity for a college scholarship to a transgender athlete. In her father Steve's fight for fairness, he learns that even finding an attorney to take his case is a challenge and getting case to trial is an even bigger obstacle. But it takes a faith-based twist when his attorney gets the judge to accept God and the Bible into evidence.
An ex-lawman travels to Mexico, searching for the heir to a Los Angeles fortune, while confronting his own complicated past. But what he finds in Baja challenges him to the core.
A prison guard begins a tentative romance with the unsuspecting widow of a man whose execution he presided over.
After living abroad, Lana returns to the United States, and finds that her uncle is a reclusive vagabond with psychic wounds from the Vietnam War.
Set in the Bronx during the tumultuous 1960s, an adolescent boy is torn between his honest, working-class father and a violent yet charismatic crime boss. Complicating matters is the youngster's growing attraction - forbidden in his neighborhood - for a beautiful black girl.
A lonely telephone operator leading an empty, amoral life finds God – only to have her faith continually tested in ways beyond what she could have imagined.