Tike and Ella May Hamlin struggle to strive in their wooden farm shack on the arid land of the Texas Panhandle during the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, Tike learns to make a sturdy simple adobe house from a five-cent government pamphlet, but not owning the land they farm and due to larger forces beyond their control-including ranching conglomerates and banks-their adobe house remains painfully out of reach.