Frannie Vaughn (Fawcett) comes back home after being away a long time, only to find that her mother has died. She also finds out that her sister, Natalie (Crow) and her husband, Jake (Bryce), are planning to sell the acres once owned by Frannie and Natalie's family. To buy the land back from her sister, Frannie gets a job and falls in love with a fellow worker, Rubin (Johnson). In the end, Frannie's dreams come true and Natalie comes to her senses and moves in to the old family house with Frannie and Rubin.

The Herlihys are a working class family from Chicago whose three children take wildly divergent paths: Brian joins the Marines right out of High School and goes to Vietnam, Michael becomes involved in the civil rights movement and after campaigning for Bobby Kennedy and Eugene McCarthy becomes involved in radical politics, and Katie gets pregnant, moves to San Francisco and joins a hippie commune. Meanwhile, the Taylors are an African-American family living in the deep South. When Willie Taylor, a minister and civil rights organizer, is shot to death, his son Emmet moves to the city and eventually joins the Black Panthers, serving as a bodyguard for Fred Hampton.