While other teenage girls are learning to apply makeup, dress attractively and flirt with boys; Charlie, dressed in jeans, boots, and a flannel shirt, is tromping fields with her father, hunting pheasant, quail, ducks, deer—whatever is in season.

Charlie hates her life. When, at sixteen, she is raped by her father’s hunting companion, Sam Gordon, she shoots him in the crotch, confiscates his pickup, and leaves home.

She flees to Chicago where she finds a job in a gun club frequented by Carlo Penna, a former crime boss, now “legit.” He takes a liking to Charlie and, when Sam finds her, shoots her dog and tries to abduct her, Carlo deals with him, as only he can, and takes her to his home. Under Carlo’s protection and devotion, Charlie, for the first time, blossoms into the beautiful young woman she was meant to be. She becomes one of Chicago’s most popular models.