Starting in the 1950s, Cadillac Road is the story of Sharon Desjardins: from her earliest childhood memories leaving Northern Quebec and a violent father to adventures in Buffalo and Crystal Beach with her mother and younger sister, Gloria, to dreams of escaping claustrophobic poverty in shabby Grenville by going to Toronto and marrying a wealthy lawyer whom she doesn't love, having turned down local boy Clinton McClary because she doesn't think he'll amount to much. In the end, depressed and on pills, Sharon realizes she needs to be true to her heart, abandons her marriage and takes to the road, a road that could very well lead back to her original hometown of Cadillac.