Presents a pictorial history of life in Maywood and at its railroad station, built in 1872 as part of a railway system that connected New Jersey to New York.

Ten miles west of Chicago on the west bank of the Des Plaines River sits Maywood, a village that was founded in 1869 by seven New England businessmen who established the Maywood Land Company. This prairie community, carefully laid out along the railroad, experienced a population boom after the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. Soon industry arrived, followed by a variety of ethnic groups. Maywood was one of the few early suburban communities with an African-American neighborhood.

In 1919, a popular young woman who worked for the real estate corporation developing a 2,300-acre ranch into home tracts near Los Angeles agreed to lend her name to both property and posterity. At a spot located only a few miles southwest of the new city's downtown, Miss May Wood's moment arrived when about 300 people turned out to see Maywood's dedication. Thousands more helped the community grow as Los Angeles sprawled throughout the 20th century, and Maywood has been a thriving little square-mile-plus ever since. It has flourished while facing such challenges as a bitter effort to dissolve the city in 1924, a "sweep-out" of gamblers in the early 1930s, and various infrastructure improvements over the years.

Established in the high-crime years of the late 1980s, Maywood Correctional Facility was designed to house the region’s most violent and prolific felons. Inevitably, it suffered from the same problems endemic to similar institutions: extreme violence, drug abuse, gangs jockeying for power, high recidivism rates, high suicide rates, and a suffocating climate of futility and despair. Conditions go from bad to worse when the prison is privatized in the late 1990s. Under the supervision of Incarceration Alternatives—a ruthless, profit driven corporation—Maywood’s inmates are seen as mere customers. As a result, the few remaining educational and jobs programs are severely curtailed for the sake of increasing shareholder profits. This dismal status quo is challenged upon the arrival of Father Dale Imbus—a worldly Jesuit priest—convicted of assaulting a police officer and providing unlawful assistance to Mexican and Latin American immigrants. The charismatic priest immediately begins to change the hearts and minds of Maywood’s population, compelling the inmates to question the meaning of their suffering, the possibility of forgiveness, the purpose of their lives, and their prospects upon release. As rumors of the priest’s ability to heal bodies and souls spread beyond the confines of Maywood, a group of wealthy, sympathetic citizens commence plotting a takeover of Incarceration Alternatives. The stage is set for two interrelated conflicts: one between the citizen supporters of Maywood’s inmates and the shareholders who determine its purpose and priorities; the other between the priest’s growing band of loyal disciples and the members of an ultraviolent Aryan gang, committed to reclaiming their diminishing power by any means necessary.