HEX RAITLIFFE (JOSH LUCAS), a chubby WASP trust-fund kid is summoned to his family home in Connecticut to deal with a family crisis. BILLIE, his mother, needs him. She is suffering from a fatal neurological condition that has deprived her of autonomy and almost of speech. 

LOU SLOANE, Billie’s husband and HEX’s stepfather, has abandoned her – making his decision known to her via computer. HEX is outraged by the cowardice of LOU’s abandonment. His outrage turns to shock when BILLIE, who now feels that her life is over, asks HEX to help her die.

HEX - the bumbling, stuttering child of privilege who made a wrong turn at some crucial point in his life - is suddenly placed at the centre of a situation he cannot handle. Over the course of the next 24 hours HEX will struggle to do the right thing in the most difficult of circumstances. 

At a restaurant that evening, HEX runs into JANE INGERSOLL, the girl of his adolescent dreams, whose life has not turned out the way she planned. Now a single mother, stuck in the suburban town she grew up in, JANE is open to something different as she re-enters HEX´s life. 
Their evening gets off to a remarkably bad start, but the tragedy of his situation draws them closer. As they lower their emotional guards, they are pulled into an unlikely romantic rendezvous.

Purple America is most of all a love story, between mother and son – suffering from the usual misunderstandings; between the unlikely romantic couple, dealing with the disenchantment of adult life; and between the older married couple, threatened by pain and death. 

The most intimate of human stories – family, romance and friendship- intersect in “Purple America” with tragedy and absurd comedy.