Owen Richardson, a hip music journalist, is dispatched to write a piece on young rock musician Sherry McGrale. With her fame on the rise and a hard-living Janis Joplin-like reputation, Sherry is no easy assignment for the young reporter. When their paths cross, their pasts collide. Soon it becomes clear that Sherry and Owen have much more in common than a passion for music; they also share a terrible secret both have been running from most of their lives. Now it's time to unravel the terrifying silence and tell the truth.In her small Florida hometown, Sherry is as famous for her haunting voice as she is infamous for her trouble-making promiscuity. Sherry is finally hitting it big with a new song that is climbing the college radio charts about her hazy memories of being raped as a young girl. But even as her career is taking off, she's still scraping the bottom -- getting arrested for drunk and disorderly behavior and remaining off-limits to anyone who tries to love her, especially her manager and guardian angel-like ex-boyfriend, Chuck.
In Los Angeles, Sherry's success is witnessed with fear and uncertainty by Owen, a journalist with "Vinyl Fetish Magazine." Like everyone in the music world, Owen knows that Sherry's hit song was inspired by events from a dreadful past -- but Owen also knows something else; he knows his own part in that past has never been reckoned with. So, he convinces his editor to do a story about Sherry after confessing in an editorial meeting that he knows who raped her. He sets out for Florida to write about Sherry, but also to come clean, and finally admit what happened. During his journey, Owen visits his heartless brother Dan in prison, hoping to come to terms with their secret by confronting him about what really happened that day many years ago. Owen is disappointed when he realizes that Dan has no remorse about the atrocity that occurred.
At first, when interviewing Sherry for the article, Owen cannot bring himself to tell her how they know each other. Gaining access to Sherry despite the fierce vigilance of Chuck, Owen discovers that he has also blocked out painful details concerning his own role in the events surrounding the rape. Sherry and Owen are both on the verge of success in the music business; yet both may also self-destruct from suppressed memories about an event that happened to both of them in childhood. It was an event that might very well have made them enemies, but now has brought them together on a path of reconciliation with the past.
