Alvin Straight was 73 when he got the call about his brother. Alvin couldn't see well enough to hold a driver's license. He walked only with the support of two canes. He didn't much care for anybody else helping him out. But when he got the call that his brother Lyle--separated from him by hundreds of miles and a decade a proud silence--had suffered a stroke, Alvin knew he had to reach him. With little money, there begins a one man's real journey across America's Heartland. Filmed along the 260-mile rout that the actual Alvin Straight traversed in 1994 from Laurens, Iowa to Mt. Zion, Wisconsin, the piece chronicles Alvin's patient odyssey and those he meets along the way. When not rolling around at five miles an hour aboard his '66 John Deere, Alvin encounters a number of strangers, from a teenage runaway to a fellow World War II veteran. By sharing his life's earned wisdom with simple stories, Alvin has a profound impact on the characters that color his pilgrimage.