A woman constantly runs from town to town with her 12 year old daughter to escape failed relationships. The film opens with an escape and subsequent shift into a new start in San Diego. There, mom takes up with a controlling trucker and fights with her boss. Meanwhile, the daughter used to making shifts, finds a fit at school- including a part as the school lead.

A woman constantly runs from town to town with her 12 year old daughter to escape failed relationships. The film opens with an escape and subsequent shift into a new start in San Diego. There, mom takes up with a controlling trucker and fights with her boss. Meanwhile, the daughter used to making shifts, finds a fit at school- including a part as the school lead.

Gavin O'Connor directed, co-wrote and plays a major supporting role in this drama about a mother and daughter coming to terms with each other's problems. In Tumbleweeds, Janet McTeer plays Mary Jo Walker, a single mother with a long string of bad marriages and a habit of hitting the road when things start to turn sour. Her 12-year-old daughter Ava (Kimberly J. Brown) has learned to live with her Mom's nomadic ways and comfortably slips into the pattern of each new town. At the film's outset, Mary Jo and Ava depart Missouri for San Diego, California, with Mary Jo falling for a rough-hewn trucker named Jack (Gavin O'Connor) along the way. Once in San Diego, Mary Jo's relationship with Jack fails to run smoothly and her new job presents more than its share of challenges, while Ava has romantic problems of her own when she gains her first boyfriend. McTeer, an established stage actress in England, made her American screen debut in this film, which also features notable character actor Michael J. Pollard as Mary J