High school art teacher Carl Rittenhaur is in line to inherit the family farm, but his guilt over the deaths of his parents burdens him from claiming his legacy. His life gets a jolt when his ex-fiancé, who had once pulled him from depression and later abandoned him at the altar, returns to town with her two-year-old daughter in tow. She is in the last throes of a custody battle with the girl's father, and Carl has been mysteriously named in the hearings. Tangled in an old romance and a corrupt family court system, Carl must find where his true hunger lies, either for his birthright and all its memories, or for this new family that may be his salvation.