Growing up in Kansas I have known real families who suffered tragedy in similar ways. It is a step back in time. Three of the four kids tended to over act but otherwise the acting is very good and the story haunted me long after. Give it a chance. I think some reviewers missed the point. Connie was simply sharing a story based on her childhood experience. Ironically sent away to keep her safe in rural Missouri after a traumatic witnessing of a horrible act in the big Apple. There is tragedy everywhere. It's slow paced but it makes it seem real and I don't understand the reviews that say they weren't touched by the story. It's really about a family's suffering which no one ever deserves but is part of life.

PLOT SPOILER REVIEW.

This is based on a true story: Connie Stevens once read a Steinbeck novel. The beginning of the film introduces Carrie, a 10 year old girl (Rylee Fansler) whose function is to supply some needless narration. She is not a major character in the film and I kept wondering how she was going to fit into the scope of things with Grace (Tatum O'Neal).

Landy (Michael Biehn) has the patience of a saint as he takes in Carrie and decides now would be a good time to get his "crazy" sister to come home against the wishes of the asylum. Grace causes issues, not unlike a Steinbeck novel we all know and love. The film introduces religion into the film which didn't seem to have a point, as did the film itself.

The film was long and slow. It was like watching the rain come down...which we did. The adult performances were spectacular. Michael Biehn was unrecognizable from his normal "B' acting role. Tatum was Oscar worthy consideration. The girls left something to be desired. Too bad Dakota Fanning had to grow up.

Overall, this was a tiresome film by Connie Stevens, who I enjoy more in front of the camera than behind.

No F-bombs or nudity. Brief sex/love scene.

I am usually very forgiving of B-grade films. I don't mind a good old- fashioned syrupy love story now and then, or some half-baked horror tale about a woman in some remote location fighting to save her family's haunted B&B . . . but this film . . . wow, I really can't forgive this one. It is so grossly manipulative, with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer, from the acting to the writing to the rainstorms of Biblical proportions. I didn't know if I was watching a Hallmark film, some silly Nickelodeon episode, or a cheap horror flick. The children are as cloying as marshmallow peeps (did no one work with these young actors, or did they just stuff them with cupcakes and candy and set them in front of the camera?). The adults--actors, director, and screen writer--didn't fare much better. I just felt bashed in the head at every turn--too much too much too much. (Towards the end of the film Penelope Miller has one of the most atrocious rain-soaked speeches I have ever seen.)

I did enjoy and appreciate Tatum O'Neal's performance. While I understand some of the harsh criticism regarding her portrayal of a severely emotionally disturbed woman, I found it to be heart breakingly realistic in the main. Of course she would drift around, half awake, half alive, twitchy and flaky and completely insecure. I actually felt sorry for this character. While I don't know how much of the story is entirely based on real events, surely placing Grace in her brother's home with his happy camper family, across the street from her former husband and his bubbly preggers wife, then given the glamorous job of sewing the baby's quilt and creating a mile-high lemon meringue pie of a ballgown for a 10 year old attending a military ball (a horrible and unnecessary story line, on several counts). . . I mean, if this is what her life has become, who wouldn't break out the sharp objects?