17-year-old Terry Jean Moore is trying to survive in small-town Ohio. She has little belief in her own value, so when her cousin shows up to raise a little hell, she goes along for the ride; she knows he’s likely to cause them both a lot of trouble, but she lacks the confidence to stop him. He commits an armed robbery and when they’re caught, she’s the one who catches the heat instead of her punk cousin. Her self-destructive rage increases her time in confinement until she is sentenced to a women’s prison in Florida. There she meets a deputy who promises her the moon—with no intention of following through. When he gets her pregnant, she slowly realizes that she now has something real to fight for, and with love and support from a few fellow inmates, she writes to and starts a professional relationship with an attorney who offers to represent her. He helps her change the laws of incarcerated pregnant women in the State of Florida. While Terry Jean Moore was released shortly after the birth of her child, her story inspired many women that there was something worth fighting for and that they too could enjoy the same hard-won redemption.