Director: Joanne Hock
Starring: Corbin Bernsen, Melissa Gilbert, Cloris Leachman, Chandler Head, Darby Camp, Lacy Camp, Alicia Fusting, Johanna Jowett, Julia Denton, Danny Boaz

Runtime: 120 mins. Reviewed in Nov 2022
Reviewer: Fr Peter Malone msc

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Rating notes: Mild themes

In 1967, two sisters are abandoned and raised by grandparents in the town of Fireside. Humour, heartbreak and triumph are served in this heart warming tale of family, friendship and forgiveness.

This is a faith film but also a popular family story told for a wide audience, especially American.

There are a few church sequences but going to church, Sunday worship, is not to the fore. There is an amount of God language, grace before meals, going to heaven, speaking of Providence, and a father berating God angrily at the death of his son in Vietnam.

Most of the film is set in 1967 although it opens in 1997 and goes back. In 1997, two sisters have been antagonistic for a long time. One has moved away from the family home in the town called Fireside. The other has remained, with her grandfather as he aged, and speaking on the local radio station, affable chatting with the townspeople who listen in to her.

In 1967, their father was sent to Vietnam, their mother abandoning them with their father’s parents. These grandparents are played by Corbin Bernsen and Melissa Gilbert (and, for many, memories of The Little House on the Prairie). At one stage, their father’s grandmother, suffering from eccentricity and dementia, lands at the house and has to be cared for. She is played by Cloris Leachman.

The film shows the relationship between the two sisters, wavering between protective of each other and antagonistic. They are mocked at school because of their absent father and mother. They get into fights. But, there is a nice boy who defends them (and turns up in the latter part of the film in 1997). The girls misinterpret some behaviour on the part of the local manager of the shop, for independent purposes, a pre-Dolly Parton looking and sounding character. The girls think she is carrying on with their grandfather and join with a friend at a sleepover in throwing toilet paper all around the front garden and trees. They have to apologise.

Eventually, the grandmother dies – the church sequence, brief. The latter part of the film has the daughter who is left town driving cross-country to return, her sister thinking she had not heard any of her requests, the two meeting, clashing, their grandfather dying, but finding some kind of reconciliation.