Harlem, 2008. In an instant, a five-story tenement collapses into a fuming hill of rubble, crushing the cars parked in front and coating the street with a thick layer of ash. As the city's rescue services and media outlets respond, the surrounding neighbourhood descends into chaos. At day's end, six bodies are recovered, and many more tenants are still missing.

Anthony Carter--whose miraculous survival, after being buried for days beneath tons of brick and stone, transforms him into a man with a message and a passionate sense of mission.

Felix Pearl--a young transplant to the city, whose photography and film work that day provokes in this previously unformed soul a sharp sense of personal destiny.

Royal Davis--owner of a failing Harlem funeral home, whose desperate trolling of the scene for potential "customers" triggers a quest to find another path in life.

And Mary Roe--a veteran city detective who, driven in part by her own family's brutal history, becomes obsessed with finding Christopher Diaz, one of the building's missing.