A heavily pregnant young woman is leaving the shopping mall to head home on a horribly hot day in Texas. Her normal life of shopping, husband, children, with the extra excitement of the imminent baby, stretches before her.

And then she is bundled into a car and kidnapped by a desperate young man.

What does he want? Where are they going?

In scenes that alternate between the desperate husband, pursuing by car, the alarmingly laid-back FBI agent tracing her by helicopter – who may or may not be as good as he thinks at rescuing hostages – and the increasingly threatened wife, Eleven Hours is a tour de force of storytelling power.