After Jehovah's witnesses find a couple brutally murdered in their trailer, convenience store owners remember their own interactions with the couple in the time preceding the murders.

A young man who went broke moves back to Chicago and lives in his aunt's basement. Meanwhile, he becomes a roofer where he is exposed to a spectrum of poverty, racism, and power among his colleagues.

After fleeing Germany in the wake of World War II, two immigrants struggle to adjust to a new life of labor and hardship on an American farm.