Life takes a strange turn when a group of outsiders come to the small town of Cholame, the famed site of James Dean's fatal car crash. Cholame's only business, a diner owned by Max (John Mahoney), is overrun by this glamorous group while the diner's short order cook (Ian Gomez) and waitress (Virginia Madsen) get caught up into this new, exciting world. Unknown to the rest, a magazine reporter (Linda Emond) arrives in town to uncover a dark secret that Max has kept hidden for over forty years.

When a series of package bombs show up on the doorsteps of prominent politicians and businessmen in the summer of 1919, U.S. Bureau of Investigation Agent William Flynn (Strathairn) is assigned the task of finding those responsible. He becomes immersed in an investigation that uncovers an anarchist plot to destroy democracy. Inspired by true events of the 20s the film sets the stage for a timely thriller with resoundingly similar parallels to the contemporary war on terrorism and the role government plays to defeat it.

Successful New York attorney Sam Leibowitz travels to the South in 1933 to defend nine young black men accused of raping two women on an Alabama freight train.