BASED ON A LITTLE KNOW BUT TRUE HISTORICAL EVENT:

In the Depression's cruelest year, 1932: A widowed, jobless, World War one Veteran, desperate to feed what's left of his family, travels across the country to join fellow WWI vets in Washington DC, to demand promised bonus money for having won the war. An embarrassment to President Hoover, sics the present-day army, led by Douglas MacArthur and flanked by Eisenhower and Patton to disperse them. The result is a major, war-like, battle within sight of the White House and Capitol building.

SYNOPSIS:

Though, in 1918, Ben won the Distinguished Service Cross for fighting The Great War, this cruelest depression year of 1932 finds him reduced to scavenging in garbage piles to feed his children. The middle class has been decimated, leaving a Charles Dickens world of the very rich and very poor.

Today's political/economic climate is reflected in the divide between rich and poor in 1932. Attitudes sound eerily similar to what you'd hear between FOX NEWS and MSNBC today. That said, this is not a story told through ideologies but one written on the heart and by the soul.

Having been widowed two years earlier, Ben is parent for his two children, Billy, 10 and Jemma, 7. After losing Billy to illness, a distraught Ben leaves Jemma with relatives and travels across the country with his friend Floyd, a fellow vet. They plan to join the Bonus March in Washington DC. This is a true event in which veterans came from all over the country, hitching rides and hopping freights to protest at the Capitol building, demanded bonus money that was promised by the government as a reward for winning the war.

The adventure of getting across the country with no money is both a radicalizing and enlightening journey for Ben. It’s both an outward an inward journey. Along the way they gather new friends, Timmy, about Billy’s age but work hardened, Charlotte, a woman in her late twenties in search of survival means, and a few others. Along the way, Ben learns to trust in and like himself, to grieve his loses and finally to let go of the pain in his past while still savoring the memories.

Ben arrives in Washington alone after being separated from Charlotte and Timmy and needing to kill Floyd who’d become grievously injured and was pleading to be put out of his misery. The mood among the protesters is unexpectedly upbeat. They fully expect to get their bonuses and the fellowship of so many other veterans with shared experience is uplifting. At first it’s nearly intoxicating. Ben even reconnects with Charlotte and Timmy, who had continued to Washington on their own, seeking Ben out. A romance finally blooms between Ben and Charlotte. :