Lost Goat Lane

The Sweetest Gift, a movie based on the same Rosa Jordan story as Lost Goat Lane, was broadcast on Showtime in 1998. It won three Emmy nominations, including one for Outstanding Children's Special, and a Parents' Choice Award. The Sweetest Gift was also selected for the 1998 Chicago International Children's Film Festival and the 1999 Berlin International Film Festival. For Thirteen-Year-Old Kate, being one of three kids in a family that's always broke means feeling ashamed and isolated, especially at school, where her classmates tease her constantly. Things aren't much better at home. Kate's mother works long hours at a dairy to make the mortgage payments on their tiny farm. Her older brother Justin talks about running away, and her younger brother Chip has a way of getting into trouble when she's supposed to be looking after him. And now Kate faces a long, hot, boring Florida summer with no friends and nothing to do but chores. But the day Kate's goat Sugar runs away, things start to get more interesting -- and more complicated. That's when she and her brothers meet the Wilsons, a tight-knit African American family. Kate is particularly drawn to Ruby, the Wilsons' glamorous grown daughter who has returned home from New York City. As Kate begins to spend time with Ruby in town she becomes aware of undercurrents of prejudice that run through her community, and the complex roles of race and class in her own relationships.