Dr. Lizzy Buckthorn completes her psychiatric residency at Stanford and begins her work at a large regional hospital in the Oklahoma Panhandle. Lizzy is a brilliant young doctor but new to the demands of a state hospital and the rural population it serves. She also happens to have lost an arm to cancer as a child and is subject to the prejudices of a community that is not used to a woman psychiatrist, much less a disabled one. Her patients include a priest who has lost his religious beliefs, an older couple that has lost sexual intimacy, and a mother who blames herself for the loss of her young girls in an auto accident. Her close friend also struggles with an unexpected pregnancy. With time and determination, Lizzy learns how to help patients achieve what Lizzy believes is most important: self-acceptance. Now she must deal with her most difficult and painful patient, a teenage boy, struggling to find himself under the domineering presence of his conservative minister father.