Valentine

Mercy is hard in a place like this . . .

Its February 1976, and Odessa, Texas, stands on the cusp of the next great oil boom.

While the towns men embrace the coming prosperity, its women intimately know and fear the violence that always seems to follow.

In the early hours of the morning after Valentines Day, fourteen-year-old Gloria Ramrez appears on the front porch of Mary Rose Whiteheads ranch house, broken and barely alive. The teenager had been viciously attacked in a nearby oil fieldan act of brutality that is tried in the churches and barrooms of Odessa before it can reach a court of law. When justice is evasive, the stage is set for a showdown with potentially devastating consequences.