Nine-year-old Lewellen (played by a 12 year old Dakota Fanning) is growing up in rural Alabama in the 1950s. It is a depressing life as Lewellen is poor and motherless. She lives with her Grammie (Piper Laurie) and has a strained relationship with her daddy (David Morse) who works a nearby farm. Lewellen's only pleasure is playing with neighbor boy Buddy (Cody Hanford) and listening to Elvis Presley. Lewellen's favorite song is Presley's "Hound Dog" which she will perform for anybody at the drop of a hat. The only adult that seems to be truly concerned about her is Charles (Afemo Omilami), a black horse trainer at a nearby farm who gives her sage advice on music, snakes and life.The situation changes when her father gets a new girl friend (Robin Wright), who is later revealed to the audience to be Lewellen's dead mother's sister who has been disowned by Grammie for sleeping with Lewellen's father. Lewellen finds a connection with her aunt and asks to go with her when the woman decides to leave after being physically abused by Lewellen's daddy. At first her aunt agrees, but changes her mind and leaves Lewellen behind.Lewellen's world is brightened when she finds that Elvis is coming to town to do a concert. However, her father gets accidentally struck by lightning while out working on a tractor during a thunderstorm, and--although he survives--he is turned into a half-wit who can no longer work. Without his income there is little chance of Lewellen getting a ticket to see Elvis in concert. Then Buddy tells her that the local teenage milkman (Christoph Sanders) will give her a ticket if she meets them at the shed down by the river. When she arrives there, however, she is told the price of the ticket is her performance of "Hound Dog" while nude. She agrees, but the milkman takes things further and brutally rapes her without giving Lewellen her ticket. (This scene, involving beloved child-actress Fanning, made the movie very controversial before it was released. The scene as eventually presented to the public, however, lasts only about a minute, and shows only Fanning's pained face from her bare shoulders up).The rape, the betrayal by Buddy, and her inability to get a ticket leave Lewellen sick and depressed until Charles convinces her that she cannot let the people who have given her this pain win. "Gotta always somehow make good outta what can poison you," he tells her. She recovers and--after discovering and picking-up a puppy on a walk down a country road--she runs into her disowned aunt (who Lewellen still does not know is her aunt) driving down that same road. The aunt has come back for Lewellen telling her she has a room at her new house for the girl. Lewellen tells her aunt that she will go with her if she can get permission. Both her aunt and Lewellen know this is unlikely. When Lewellen approaches Grammie and her daddy, however, she sees from a distance that they have just killed a rattlesnake. She is just about to get closer to warn her father that Charles has taught her that rattlesnakes can continue to strike even after they are dead, but suddenly decides not to. Her father then gets bitten and in the confusion Lewellen walks away, climbs into her Aunt's car and leaves.