When her mother suffers a heart attack, successful New York writer Stephanie Golden sets aside her job and fiancé to return to her hometown in Kansas. There she finds a family in turmoil and her younger sister Monica sinking into the dark world of drug addiction.

In 1994, real-life crop artist Stan Herd traveled from Kansas to Manhattan's Upper West Side to create a massive environmental artwork on land owned by Donald Trump. The multi-acre artwork was made from soil, rock, plants and vegetation near an underground railway tunnel. Stan recruited a number of homeless individuals living in the tunnel to become his crew. Over the months it took to complete the earthwork, Stan dealt with a myriad of difficulties in bringing his unique, rural art form to an urban canvas and the many costs his art exacted upon his life. In the process, he unexpectedly encountered the true meaning of his art and it's ultimate, lasting rewards