Desperately poor in 1910 and trying to save her family from being forced to move to a facility for indigents, Lizzie Hughes must send one of her children to a Catholic Orphanage. Lizzie and her husband,James, are the first of their families to be born in the United States. Both of their families immigrated to the United States after the great Civil War. However Lizzie's family is from war torn Germany and James' family came from the starving Island of Ireland. Now, they live in highly industrialized Syracuse, New York, a place depended on immigrant labor but with little tolerance of the immigrant communities. Neither family finds it easy to secure the American Dream they are seeking in a country which is rapidly changing in the early 1900's.
Young Tom Hughes has little or no say about his future. Torn between the forces of poverty and hi dependence on the acceptance of the Catholic Church, he has no easy path to follow. Mixed in with this situation is his love of his drunken Irish father, his fear of his German grandfather and his deep love of the American game of baseball.
Although this story is more than 100 years old, it is a story still played out everyday in modern America. The country of origin may have changed,
but immigrants still face the social changes, the lack of acceptance, the poverty and technological changes that may render them obsolete as workers.
