Song of the Cicada

Natty Hogue came to the desert seeking change but finds the harsh landscape as immutable as the past she hopes to escape. As director of nurses, she oversees the daily routine at "the San," a remote, Southern California tuberculosis sanitarium in the 1960s. Her no-nonsense, by-the-book style brings her into conflict with a combative young nurse-in-training who is bent on undermining her authority at every turn. At the same time, Natty reluctantly finds herself drawn to the sanitarium's handyman, an inventive Mexican national who is determined to make his mark in the "gringo" north.

It is the arrival of new patient Adam Cheatwood, a strong-willed, seven-year-old boy, that begins a year-long process of transforming not only Natty's life but the lives of those around her. From his position at the center of the escalating adult drama, Adam draws a parallel between human existence and that of the cicada, an insect that lives for years underground until one day it emerges to finally and irrevocably sing its song.