During the Spanish flu epidemic in 1918, a young boy is left alone so his family can be treated in their town’s makeshift hospital. The boy tries his best to hold down the fort and prove his manhood, though the people around him make it more difficult than he expected.

A boy learns from his father’s best friend the history of his family and the value of man’s relationship with nature, but is interrupted by his father’s death and his mother’s sudden arrival.

An older white man in the South agrees to hide a Black fugitive on the same night his old lover visits with her husband and son. When a mob arrives at his house in pursuit of the fugitive, the older man inadvertently causes the death of his newfound kin.