This story is told by assembling character portraits, all leading to a major climax when all the character's lives come together. These are the portraits in order.
Avis is a lonely, frustrated housewife who feels trapped by the house she so carefully built for her son and for herself. In the middle of the night, she says too much and has to leave her home. She's had a difficult life, and she is left with the realization that she has brought herself back to ground zero. She must now re-establish her life from scratch for herself. Her son has returned from his third tour in Iraq and is going to become a police officer.
Roberta is a court-appointed child care advocate who we meet while she is thinking of past cases, and the contrast between the Las Vegas that people know and the reality of the unsightly underbelly of the city, the serious income inequality and the tragic criminal element.
Bashkim is only 8 years old. He lives in Las Vegas with his family who run an ice cream truck for money. Bashkim's baba and nene are Albanian political refugees. The young child loves his life at school, and he loves his little sister as well, but the family isn't exactly peaceful. It seems the constant paranoia and distress of his difficult life as a political refugee has left Baba unable to control his wrath, and he often takes out his paranoia against his wife by beating her in front of Bashkim.
When we meet Luis Rodrigues-Reyes, he is waking up in the hospital. He has been badly injured during his tour in Afghanistan, and his best friend was killed in the attack that left him injured. He has been in correspondence with Bashkim, the Albanian boy through an elementary school project.
After seeing that Nate, Avis's son, has been abusing his wife, Avis and Jim reunite to have dinner with their son. Jim is comfortable with Nate's thinly veiled defense, but Avis sees Lauren, Nate's wife, and how nervous and bothered she is, and Avis suspects that Nate is more violent than he seems.
Luis is hospitalized for a self-inflicted gunshot wound, it seems. His depression and PTSD become Bashkim's problem too when he over-shares with the young boy. When the boy asks, "Did you have to kill people?" the soldier responds, that yes, he has killed. He has even killed small boys like Bashkim, and he even goes so far as to say that because of his name, someone will probably try to kill Bashkim one day.
Back at Bashkim's school, the boy is left badly shaken, and when the boy's parents are called to the school to deal with the matter, the father's explosive temper and relentless paranoia make matters even worse, leaving Bashkim badly wounded by the whole experience.
Luis doesn't even know that he wrote the letter until it is revealed to him by his therapy. Apparently he wrote the letter during a suicidal episode, and shot himself when he was done with the letter. With help from his psychiatrist, Dr. Ghosh, and the help of the school, Bashkim and Luis can continue corresponding—this time without the father becoming involved.
Avis doesn't know what to think of her son. Her son was troubled even before his involvement with the military. When he was a high schooler, he was involved in a drinking and driving incident where someone was killed.
Then her worst nightmares are worsened when Nate's service as a police officer leads to the murder of Bashkim's mother during a traffic citation. He says he thought the ice cream scoop that Bashkim's mother was carrying was actually a knife she was going to use to kill her own son, so Nate allegedly did it to protect Bashkim, but nevertheless, his trigger-happy anxiety leaves Bashkim motherless and permanently traumatized.
In court, Nate is let off easy, but his mother confronts the commander and demands that Nate be treated for his obvious PTSD, and that they take his mistake seriously—or else she will alert the media. Luis hears about Bashkim and offers to help. Roberta, the child advocate, uses this opportunity to provide Bashkim with a home, and the court rules to remove the children to the custody of Luis.
