Joe reveals that he has been approached by a scientist who thinks that the town's trees might have medicinal benefits, which might lead to greater economic prospects for Gilead.

Initially unsuccessful at contacting the hermit, Percy eventually follows him and discovers his makeshift abode in the woods where he crafts aviary art pieces out of bark and other natural materials.

Influenced by Nahum, the local sheriff gathers a posse of state troopers and some of Gilead's citizens (some with bloodhounds) to search for Percy and her supposed accomplice.

There, Percy reveals to Shelby that she had been sexually abused from age 9 to 16 by her stepfather, Mason Talbott, who impregnated her and then later assaulted her, leading to her unborn baby's death.

After whisking her away from the hospital and to a hotel, Mason drunkenly insulted the memory of Percy's baby, provoking her to kill him with a razor blade, resulting in her incarceration.

Later in the summertime as Gilead is celebrating its town festival, the winner of the essay contest, a young woman named Clare, arrives with her toddler son, Charlie.

The citizens of Gilead welcome her enthusiastically, and Hannah shows her to her new home and business as a place for Clare and her son to start life anew.

Overall, the film deals with powerful themes of redemption, hatred, compassion, independence, the economic problems of small towns, the plight of Vietnam War veterans, and, to some extent, female empowerment.

The idea for the film was conceived by Malcolm Roger Courts, long-time director and CEO of Sacred Heart League, Inc., a Catholic nonprofit fundraising and communications organization based in Walls, Mississippi.

[2][3] In the late 1970s, he wished to make a film—an alternative to the ministry of print that was a hallmark of Sacred Heart League, which published and distributed millions of pieces of literature.

During one sold-out festival screening, a representative of Castle Rock Entertainment viewed the film and contacted her superiors in Los Angeles.

Profits from the sale of the film were used to construct a kindergarten through eighth grade school for 450 children in Southaven, Mississippi, located 10 miles from the Sacred Heart League headquarters in Walls.

In 2001, a musical adaptation of the film with a brighter ending, written by Fred Alley and James Valcq[4] premiered at George Street Playhouse in New Brunswick, New Jersey, directed by David Saint and then moved to Playwrights Horizons Theater in New York.

Roger Ebert wrote "Watching this plot unfold, I was remembering last week's Heavy, which also premiered at Sundance; its cafe was run by an older woman (Shelley Winters), and had a veteran waitress (Deborah Harry) and a young waitress (Liv Tyler), and had a regular customer whose name was Leo, not Joe, although he was played by Joe Grifasi.

[6] Robert Roten of the Laramie Movie Scope wrote "this light character study explodes into a full blown melodrama at the end using a bunch of tired old clichés, like misplaced money, your standard hermit in the woods and an almost laughably melodramatic drowning.