On the day he is released from the state penitentiary on parole after serving five years for robbery, Jack Kelson is tracked down by his now fourteen year old son, Nick Kelson, who wants to be with his father. Jack, in turn, wants nothing to do with Nick, both in having enough to contend with in getting his life on track for himself, and knowing that his own life has been one big failure, he determined for Nick not to get caught up in that cycle. Regardless as Nick cannot be dissuaded, the pair try to eke out a life together living in a rundown residential hotel in a low income neighborhood in Seattle, with the pipe dream of moving to the land of opportunity of frontier Alaska. While Jack goes to work for a commercial window washing business - one of the lies he telling Nick being he has a job as a construction supervisor - and strikes a relationship with Charlotte, a cab driver who wrote to him in prison, Nick has his first case of puppy love for Molly, a teen prostitute who lives with her adolescent brother Roy and stripper/prostitute mother Diane in a unit in the same building, leading to Nick being ensconced within a group of street youth to which Molly belongs. As the going gets tough, it may be easy for Jack to fall into old routines and Nick to follow in Jack's past footsteps, especially as Jack's old criminal associate Ray, who learned everything he knows from Jack, comes around trying to pull one or both into the life.