The film follows the story of Duncan, a fourteen-year-old misfit farm boy trying to fill the void and alleviate the numbness left by his mother’s passing. Unable to let her go quite yet, Duncan mimics his dead mother. He talks in her voice at the dinner table and wears her fur coat to bed. Edgar, Duncan’s distant sixty-year-old father, doesn’t understand the strange manifestations of his son’s mourning. Why can’t Duncan grieve like a normal person? Macho mate Perry Foley, who has it physically even harder on his dad’s farm, usually comforts Duncan and defends his ‘wimpiness’ to their cocky ruffian mates Travis, Scotty and Brent. But although clearly attracted to gentle Duncan himself, the socially unacceptable suggestion of ‘sissy’ homosexuality makes Perry over-react and turn on his friend.

Ignored by his father, Edgar (Richard Jenkins), ostracized by the local children and torn apart by the recent death of his mother, young teen Duncan Mudge (Emile Hirsch) begins behaving strangely. At first, he seeks comfort in the company of his pet chicken, and later he begins dressing in his late mother’s clothing. When Mudge finds himself attracted to a local boy named Perry (Thomas Guiry), he has no one to help him understand his burgeoning homosexuality.