Seventeen-year-old Dusty Slaughter is a poor kid who has been fighting uphill battles his entire life. With his daddy in prison and a no-good mama, Slaughter is stuck in Nowhere, North Carolina and knows that as the number one running back in the region, football is his only chance to escape. When given the chance to impress scouts from the University of North Carolina, he rises to the challenge. But once he gets back home to Flatbush, Dusty finds the world he knows has collapsed around him.

Little does he know, Slaughter is in for the worst year of his life. His family is in turmoil, his relationship with his girlfriend is tenuous at best, and his dreams seem to be vanishing all around him. His greatest fear is failure because he knows it means he'll have to go to work at the local factory just like everybody else in his town. It isn't until tragedy strikes and he meets eight-year-old leukemia patient Anderson Thacker and his sister Collins that he realizes there is more to life than football. A world he never dreamed possible.

Collins and Andy show Slaughter there is so much more in life if he's willing to find a new path and another dream. Through adversity, Slaughter discovers a talent within himself he never knew existed, and it's this epiphany that becomes the catalyst he needs to do whatever it takes to make Andy proud of him and keep Collins forever.