Desiree Coleman

When her father unexpectedly falls terminally ill, exotic dancer Jessica "Jesse" Brown returns home for the first time in more than a decade. Her father's dying wish - that she take over as head of Mount Olive Baptist Church - turns her life and her family's life upside down.

This film adaptation of James Baldwin's celebrated novel tells the journey of a family from the rural South to "big city" Harlem seeking both salvation and understanding and of a young boy struggling to earn the approval of a self-righteous and often unloving stepfather.

Robert James, an entertainment reporter for a local Los Angeles television station, is handsome, smart and thoroughly modern in his thinking. Recently divorced from the somewhat self-absorbed Neesee, the mother of their endearing 6-year-old son, Robert refuses to buy into the old stereotype that being divorced means you can't get along with the ex.