It's 1959 and Harry ‘Rabbit’ Angstrom, one-time high-school sports superstar, is going nowhere. With no way to fix things, he flees his family and his home in Pennsylvania, beginning a thousand-mile journey that he hopes will free him from his mediocre life. Because, as he knows only too well, 'after you've been first-rate at something, no matter what, it kind of takes the kick out of being second-rate.