A poor, 9-year-old, Black boy travels with a church camp to visit a house in a wealthy, white neighborhood with a pool to play in and lots of food. When the group's usual host is out of town and the van takes them to a Black woman's house instead, the boy begins to learn lessons about race and class that he does not yet fully understand.

In the 70s, a depressed, overweight, insecure, intellectual teenage girl stays for two weeks with a wealthy family her mother sews clothes for, the members of whom she considers confident and beautiful. She visits the historic house of her favorite novelist and entertains sexual fantasies about the boys. Years later, after becoming an academic, she reflects on the dynamics of gender and power.

In the rural south, a sharecropper is terrorized by spirits after she and her family move into an abandoned plantation once inhabited by wealthy, classist elites.

A group of working class people run a dangerous path toward a promised Elysium, and those who survive are rewarded with nothing they can appreciate or comprehend.