Ithaca

Ithaca is a 2015 American drama film directed by Meg Ryan and written by Erik Jendresen. It is based on the 1943 novel The Human Comedy by William Saroyan. The film stars Alex Neustaedter, Jack Quaid, Meg Ryan, Sam Shepard, Hamish Linklater and Tom Hanks. The film was released on September 9, 2016, by Momentum Pictures. Plot In 1942, Homer Macauley is a determined 14-year-old who seeks work delivering telegrams to take care of his widowed mother Katie, his older sister Bess and his 4-year-old brother Ulysses. He aims to be the best and fastest bicycle telegraph messenger of the small fictional town of Ithaca, CA. The very first telegram Homer delivers is to a Hispanic woman who is illiterate in English. She asks him to read it out loud. It's from the Secretary of Defense, informing her of her son's death in the war. Homer's older brother Marcus, along with most of the young men of the town, has gone to serve in World War II, leaving the families worried. Their father has died recently in the war.