Hobbled by childhood polio, Vera ends up marrying a painter named Everett, 20 years her senior with whom she has two sons. Everett disappears for several months out of the year to go on painting trips while Vera is the main breadwinner and caretaker of the children. She eventually realizes that Everett is having affairs all over town. The Great Depression inches closer and Everett has not sold a painting in over a year. Vera must leave her sons with a woman in Oakland who has opened her home to children whose parents cannot afford to keep them. It is the loss of her sons and her marriage that propel her to start photographing the now homeless and penniless people walking the streets of San Francisco.