Britannica

VERNON BERGDAHL, a reclusive and naïve middle-aged encyclopedia salesman, struggles to survive in a world that no longer sees the value in his wares. Homeschooled and overprotected by his mother GERTA, who worked nights at a library, he was allowed very few connections to the real world, the best being a pen pal correspondence and the occasional matinee. But when Gerta died, so did the letters, leaving their close friend and county sheriff, LELAND BEAUDRY, the task of raising Vernon into a functional adult.

He maintained a decent life for a while, but the digital age now finds Vernon scrounging for food and burning furniture to stay warm. In pursuit of perishable wood, he discovers his last pen pal letter, unsent, in his mother’s room, and something sparks inside him. Like a moth to a flame and with nothing else to live for, he embarks on a quest to find his long lost connection and discover the real Vernon Bergdahl inside him.

The trip starts off bad when conflicting addresses and misguided directions land him in a bowling alley diner, where he involuntarily becomes involved in a bathroom drug deal gone awry. AMELIA (26), an unassuming con artist with an eye patch, hides out in his unlocked Monte Carlo and convinces him to take her along to Sioux Falls. He doesn’t trust her, but he needs her help to find Sarah.

As they reach the address, Amelia realizes it’s the location of one of the local drug pipelines. Not a storage or supply house or retailer. Just a lower-end managing facility run by YANNICK and his henchmen, BRUCE and BOGGS. Self-preservation is always her first instinct, so she runs off, knowing full well she’s left a decent but gullible man in harm’s way.

After a sleepless night at a dirty and dangerous motel, Vernon returns to see Yannick. He wants him to deliver ceramic elephants in exchange for tracking down the whereabouts of his pen pal Sarah. Simple enough. But as Vernon is beginning to learn, nothing is as simple as it seems. STEVE, the owner of a used bookstore, tries to grope Vernon upon delivery. In the struggle, an elephant breaks, sending heroin packets to the floor, Steve into a rage, and Vernon into concern for his life.

In the meantime, Yannick gets word from the pipeline’s gatekeeper, MARQUEZ, that two runners are dead or missing, leaving a major shipment needing immediate delivery to “The Farm.” And failure means certain death for all of them. So, Yannick agrees to help, forcing Vernon to make the run due to his elephant screw-up. Since Boggs has gone missing following a rogue attack on Amelia, Yannick has to send the ailing Bruce along to supervise, whose hand Yannick severely burned in a chili pot he failed to stir.

Amelia, again hiding in the back of Vernon’s car, begs him not to go. He’s been told Sarah works on the farm, so he’s eager to go. In her mind, he’s so close that he can’t see the danger. But Vernon goes anyway. The long overnight drive brings Bruce and Vernon to a small farm in the middle of nowhere. SARAH, the checkpoint manager and resident drug addict, is lonely and crazy enough to play along with Vernon’s weird pen pal fascination. But when he sees things in the upstairs medicine cabinet, something tells him she’s not the real deal. Meanwhile, Bruce’s hand has gotten worse, possibly infected.

Sarah lures Vernon to the barn to unload the delivery then tries to seduce him. When he spurns her advances, she tries to shoot him, by orders from above. The drugs affect her aim and balance, giving him the chance to knock her out of the hayloft. He ends up crushing her against cement floor of the barn and freaks out. Then he’s startled to see Amelia there to rescue him. He gave her the keys to his car thinking she’d steal it, but instead she followed him knowing his safety was in jeopardy.

She steals the cash intended for Yannick and drives them to the one place nobody knows about, her childhood home. With her parents on vacation, as expected, they decide to wind down from the last 24 hours before taking off in the morning. They go out for drinks, his first, and a tour of the town. But on the way home, they run into old jerks from high school. JASON, BRETT, and TYLER are blind drunk and familiar with Amelia’s rumored promiscuous past. They think she’ll comply by threatening to rape her. Adrenaline and beer stir Vernon into a rare fighting mode, but he blacks out.

Amelia and Vernon awake bloodied and bruised in her parents’ bed, alive and safe. Then they smell pancakes. Her mom and dad have returned home early. And called the police.

As state police interrogate Vernon, Sheriff Beaudry arrives to bring him home on extradition, pending all charges. His vacant home has been ransacked by burglars and flooded by a broken water main. His history is destroyed. His normal way of life gone. But what’s more destructive is his discovery of more pen pal letters. Never mailed. Hidden away in his mother’s room. A lie his entire life. The reality hits him like an emotional locomotive, and sadness soaks in.

Considerate of their relationship, Beaudry puts him under a soft house arrest. That night as Vernon unpacks, he finds money tucked between the pages of a book, put there by Amelia. It moves him to both smiles and tears. The next morning, Beaudry finds an empty apartment and two letters. One that implicates everyone in The Farm saga. The other a goodbye note.

Months later, Amelia receives a mysterious postcard from Bolivia. She knows it’s from Vernon, who escaped to where his favorite movie heroes did, reinventing himself as the gringo who teaches children from old encyclopedias.