Promised Land 1987

It's just before Christmas, two years after David Hancock, Mary Daley and Danny Rivers were classmates at Ashville High School in small town Ashville, Utah, David then the basketball star, Mary the cheerleader, and Danny the unassuming geek, his generally quiet state masking a simmering turbulent and unsettled nature underneath as witnessed by he sneaking out of town for good before graduation without telling his family. At the time, Danny was secretly in love with Mary and openly in awe of David, both who he was surprised considered him a friend of sorts, while David and Mary arguably saw their burgeoning relationship as possibly being for the long haul as they thought about their immediate future going to college together, David on a basketball scholarship. While they are still dating in some respects, David and Mary are now at a crossroads in their relationship in their lives diverging, which started when David dropped out of college upon the loss of his scholarship - he unable to continue on academic merit alone - only to return to Ashville ultimately to get a job as an officer in the local police force. While being back in Ashville provides him with some continued adulation from residents who still see him as the basketball star, he can only see his life now as that unfulfilled promise of greatness. Meanwhile, Danny has ended up a drifter, and still unsettled in nature, has just married Bev Sykes, a proverbial wild child, her recklessness also masking some deep insecurities. For the first time since that quiet departure, Danny decides it's time to "go home" for his family and Bev to meet, he talking to his mother once on the telephone in that intervening time as his only connection to home. David, Mary, Danny and Bev's lives will collide on this fateful Christmas back in Ashville, this collision not only them as physical beings but what they now represent in society.