A young wife invites her rival to dinner and sees that her husband is still interested in the old flame. He takes the woman home and is gone for several hours. In the morning, the woman is found dead in her hallway, the victim of a fall down the stairs that could have been accidental or could have been murder.
Twelve-year-old orphan Bill Caldwell is sent to stay with his eccentric grandmother when his aunt and uncle go to Europe. Down on her luck in 1929 Detroit, Grandma rents out 22 rooms of her 25-room house. Every March, the circus comes to town and some of the more interesting characters stay at Grandma's. Young Bill learns much more about life interacting with his Grandma and her colorful boarders than living with his stuffy aunt and uncle.
When a stranger to a small town is beaten up by a locals, upright residents gather, inexplicably, against their will to the town hall. Once assembled, they find they can't leave and time has stopped. All talk about the stranger, (also present). Some express rage for his views and reveal their misguided ideas of American patriotism, which are really prejudices against freedom of thought and free speech.