Gabriel Caine has just been released from prison when he sets up a bet with a business man who owns most of Diggstown, a boxing-mad town. The bet is that Gabe can find a boxer that will knock out 10 Diggstown men, in a boxing ring, within 24 hours. Roy 'Honey' Palmer is that man that, at 48, many say he is too old.

Sixty year old Max is having something of a middle-age crisis. His marriage seems to go nowhere as the passion, tenderness and happiness vanished when their daughter moved out. On top of that he owns an antique hardware store which is close to bankruptcy. While driving home Max is involved in a traffic accident which gives him amnesia. Confused, lost and in a disordered state, he wanders into a camp full of Latin American farm workers. There he finds a new meaning of life, happiness and a sense of belonging. However, as his memory slowly returns, it's inevitable that he must confront his past.

Twelve-year-old Mexican-American Marcos (Jose Alcala) recalls the hardships of the previous year, reflecting on the arduous trek his migrant-worker family made from Texas to the Midwest during harvest season. Along the way, Marcos learns plenty about the harsh realities of bigotry and the power of family in America of the 1950s. The coming-of-age Chicano drama is based on Tomas Rivera's semiautobiographical 1971 novella.