The film opens in present day, when the proprietor of a small traveling circus (portrayed in the movie by Circus Vargas) encounters an elderly man who has apparently become detached from his nursing home group, which attended the circus earlier that day. They strike up a conversation and the elderly man reveals that he himself had a career in the circus business. Jacob reveals that he was present during one of the most infamous circus disasters of all time and the circus owner asks him to share his story.

Most of the film then takes place in a flashback to the era of the Great Depression. 23-year-old Polish American Jacob is a Cornell veterinary medicine student on the brink of a promising career as a veterinarian. Unfortunately, during his last final exam, he is informed that his parents were killed in a car crash…