A small boy flees a toxic family, all the way across the alley to Rip's Bar & Package Liquor Store and a vivid troupe of broken people in the Albuquerque Bosque. They hide him from his car-thief drunkard father, his cocaine-freak mother, and his ganged-up abusive brother. The boy gladly trades family for a hodgepodge of drinkers and losers. But it's bad timing. A new bridge proposed across the Rio Grande will wreck the fragile ghetto. The barflies share responsibility for the child while their Bosque crumbles. They collect misery like small change and rally to keep their neighborhood alive. Will the working poor beat City Hall and keep the kid out of the system?