For this study of rural poverty in America, inspired by that of James Agee and Walker Evans in 1941, Ross Spears and co-producer Silvia Kersusan spent three years with the family of Obea and Alice Glass, who live in Virginia in a self-made wooden house. The hardworking Glasses survive but do not thrive. They are among America's disenfranchised, having inherited illiteracy and any number of diet-related diseases, yet ineligible for government aid. Why, and how, are the Glasses our business? This is the subject of Spears's film, and he offers Agee's prose, as well as interviews with others, to examine the ethical issues in creating art-even art with the goal of compassion and awareness-from the misery of others. The Glass family's life is rendered, as surely as Alice renders the lard for an evening's meal, and whether they become more real or less human as a result is each viewer's call.