When Daisy Werthan (Dame Angela Lansbury), a widowed, seventy-two-year-old Jewish woman living in midcentury Atlanta, Georgia, is deemed too old to drive, her son, Boolie (Boyd Gaines), hires Hoke Colburn (James Earl Jones), an African-American man, to serve as her chauffeur. What begins as a troubled and hostile pairing, soon blossoms into a profound, life-altering friendship that transcends all the societal boundaries placed between them.