 Ten years ago, Champ Hannen was the star quarterback of the football team and the envy of everyone in his small Iowa town. A football scholarship was his big ticket out of there, and he was destined for greatness. Champ s mother was his biggest fan and greatest inspiration. She believed in him like no one else. In one horrific instant, the course of Champ s destiny changed. His mother died, taking with her a part of his soul. The story picks up ten years later. Champ never did attend college or continue playing football. His life has been falling apart steadily, and his hopes for a brighter future have vanished. Still living on the farm, he is an alcoholic womanizer. His affair with the beautiful Sadie is the worst kept secret in town - even from Sadie s husband, Tom. Has Champ found the one true love who will stay by his side, or does Sadie have a secret agenda of her own? Champ s father, Cole, has married a younger woman named Mita, who has a teenage daughter named Maggie. Father and son do not see eye to eye, and life on the Hannen farm is a daily battlefield of words. Cole does not want to see the Hannen name sullied by Champ s escapades with Sadie. The family faces another major blow when Cole dies suddenly. Champ is haunted by memories of his militaristic father, who was disappointed that his son made so little of his life. Reconciliation with his father is no longer a possibility. He has yet another reason to drink himself to death. Champ s half-brother Junior returns from the big city for the funeral and the reading of the will. Old wounds are reopened. The animosity between the brothers has simmered over the years, threatening to boil over as the family struggles to pull itself back together. Afraid that Champ will run the farm into the ground, Junior wants him to sell the land to a developer. But Champ doesn t want things to change. He lives more in the past than in the present, now that the future has lost all luster. The ghosts of yesteryear haunt his every move. With emotions bubbling, the family continues to disintegrate. Mita is worried about having her daughter Maggie under the same roof as Champ, who she views as a predator. Meanwhile, Junior keeps a watchful eye over his own wife, in fear that no woman is completely safe from Champ s gazing eyes. What boundaries will Champ be willing to cross as he tries to keep the Hannen family from completely crumbling? When the will is read, all hell breaks loose. Brother turns against brother, and nobody trusts anyone. The future looks brighter when an oil prospector approaches Champ with an unexpected offer. Maybe he can escape the specters of the past that besiege him every waking moment - and in his dreams. Maybe he can run away and start a new life with Sadie. Maybe he can live with the ultimate betrayal. Heartland Son is a gripping drama about a family on the edge - a story of forbidden passion and redemption. A family s destiny will be determined with one fateful decision.