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Grace Cragin is a bright young lawyer who has a passion for the fight against injustice. Her ex-husband Henry is a lawyer too, but his passion is only to win. The two were divorced ten years earlier when Henry's lust for conquest led him to other women. Now, Grace has a case she cannot win alone and, although she hates to admit it, she needs Henry's help.
Way out west, it's a moral dilemma for Jill Eikenberry. Her character, manicurist Joanne Johnson, is the kind of woman who stands by her man. She and her husband, Matt (Coyote), have held their marriage and family together, even though times on their small Southwestern ranch have been tough. One night, Matt and a couple of his buddies get drunk in a local saloon before heading home. They're also stewing in anti-Hispanic racial resentment. Matt is having a hard time making a living and has just had to sell off the last chunk of his inherited ranch property to a family named Martinez. The tragic result of their mean-spirited horseplay is a small Mexican church. burned to the ground, two young people critically injured and three men tangled up in fear, loathing, and lies. Joanne senses the awful truth way ahead of her spiteful, narrow-minded pals down at the local beauty parlor, and she sets out to do the right thing.
After a series of small tremors in Los Angeles, Dr. Clare Winslow, a local seismologist, pinpoints the exact location and time of when the long awaited earthquake--"The Big One"--will strike southern California. With this information, she must battle city officials to release this information to the general public. Also, she hopes that her family is out of harms way when the quake strikes. Subplots show how other families and people cope with the the tremors that strike before the impending "Big One."