Are we destined to become our fathers? How does a man reconcile responsibility for himself with responsibility for his family? These are the main themes presented in Walkaway Joe.

A kind of modern-day SHANE, this is the story of an encounter between a man and a boy and how their unlikely friendship shows each what it really means to be a father.

Walkaway Joe follows the lives of Joe Haley and Dallas McCarthey, a fifty year-old loner and a fourteen year-old boy, thrown together on the road in Texas in this story about fathers and sons.

When Dallas’ pool-hustling father abandons his family, Dallas takes to his bicycle and goes on the road after him. No stranger to the bar scene or the world of pool hustling himself, Dallas is determined to confront his father and bring him home.

Enter Joe Haley, a drifter wrestling with a past he’d rather forget. Feeling responsible for the boy’s safety, Joe reluctantly becomes the boy’s protector.

From the pool halls of West Texas to Dallas’ first trip to the city he was named for, through fights with bar drunks, visits to ex-wives, and threats from loan sharks hot on his father’s trail, Dallas and Joe push each other’s buttons, but ultimately forge a sort of father-son relationship of their own.

It all leads to a climactic nine-ball tournament where Dallas must face down his delinquent father, and a graduation ceremony where Joe is forced to confront the son he abandoned long ago.

In the end, Dallas comes to understand what it means to be true to yourself and Joe becomes a mentor to the boy in a way neither father could ever be to their own sons.

Website: walkawayjoe.com