Life Moves Fast

Emma Dunston, defiant daughter of turn of the century multi-millionaire industrialist, Jonathan Dunston, has been expelled from yet another boarding school. This time her fathers uncontrolled rage at her lack of acceptable decorum leads him to incarcerate her in a home for wayward girls, where Emma fantasizes about shooting him so she can watch tiny pieces of his tiny manhood fly everywhere. Emma eventually graduates from nursing school, further enraging her father's sense of upper class privilege. When Emma tells him she intends to minister to the sick and homeless, he threatens her with commitment to an asylum, just as he had done to Emma's mother, for her lack of appropriate obedience. Fearful he will follow through with his threat, Emma flees to a missionary camp in Africa, where she meets camp physician Joe Eagle, and they immediately establish a contentious relationship. Emma soon finds her bravado quickly dwindling away in the face of starvation and unspeakable horror at the camp. Two societal outcasts, Emma and Joe eventually reach out to each other and find they are more alike than they had ever imagined. As Joe and Emma prepare to move to New Mexico to Joe's ancestral home and their lives become increasingly complicated.