Places in the Heart

Places in the Heart is a 1984 American drama film written and directed by Robert Benton about a U.S. Depression-era Texas widow who tries to save the family farm with the help of a blind white man and a poor black man. It stars Sally Field, Lindsay Crouse, Ed Harris, Amy Madigan, John Malkovich, Danny Glover, and Terry O'Quinn. It was filmed in Waxahachie, Texas.

Plot

It is the year 1935 and Waxahachie, Texas is a small, segregated town in the midst of a depression. One evening the local sheriff, Royce Spalding, leaves the family dinner table to investigate trouble at the rail yards. He dies after being accidentally shot by a young black boy, Wylie. Local white vigilantes tie Wylie to a truck and drag his body through town, for all the community to see, before hanging him from a tree.

The sheriff's widow, Edna Spalding, is left to raise her children alone and maintain the family farm. The bank has a note on the farm and money is scarce; the price for cotton is plummeting and many farms are going under. The local banker, Mr. Denby, pays her a visit. He begins to pressure her to sell the farm as he doesn't see how she can afford to make the loan payments on her own let alone run the farm.