Shooting Sparla follows Sparla

 

tells the story of Sparla, a young girl who is abandoned by her drug addled parents as they go off in search of a chemical high. Left in a field, Sparla spends a winter inside an empty snail shell, and when spring arrives she befriends a worm and lives on the hillside until she is found by a young couple and adopted.

Sparla grows up and up, through high school and technical college and into finding a job and establishing

 

Into this new family Sparla slowly struggles to fit, and as she does she grows to love her new Mother very much, who dotes on her at every opportunity. But when Mother falls sick and dies, her heartbroken Father abandons the girls, who have to rely upon themselves to grow up.

Sparla makes friends and gets a job, goes to a school dance and overt time becomes close with her sisters, who on several occasions protect her from harm. After high school, Sparla enrolls in a technical college and becomes a welder. One day Sparla meets a man who

One day a man arrives with a brooch Sparla had made and discarded in high school. Unlike many of the other men who have approached her throughout the story, this one is not a threat, and the story ends with this strange man clapping a rhythm with his hands while Sparla dances naked before him.