In an inner courtyard of a working-class neighborhood, in the heart of the 1950s, Charlotte discovers a barefoot, inconsolable child. She sets out to retrieve his pair of shoes, hanging from an electrical wire above their heads. Soon, neighbors of all kinds join the effort. But the task proves much more difficult than it first appears.

A literature teacher goes home and find his husband sitting on the floor, a bloody hammer in his hands, next to a girl half dead...