After a tragic accident caused by the truck of the middle-aged Carl Lee where a woman dies with a crushed stern, he is arrested and sent to the county jail. His son PJ, who works washing dishes and cleaning tables in a restaurant, feels lost, without financial support to keep his father's house, and is fired from his job and evicted from his house. His older brother Ben is a harder worker in a mill with a little daughter and cheats his wife with a bartender. Ben has open wounds in his relationship with his father and does not visit him in the jail. Carl's brother Vic Lee helps PJ bringing him home but demanding discipline and respect. PJ's mother has just left her husband and is living with a policeman. On Christmas, the remorseful Carl forces PJ to keep an overwhelming secret that bonds them.

Carl Lee:
everyone is born ugly, then you look good for forty years, then you start to look ugly again