For Esperanza, a young girl growing up in the Hispanic quarter of Chicago, life is an endless landscape of concrete and run-down tenements, and she tries to rise above the hopelessness.
In 1954, Ishmael Chambers, a local reporter who lost an arm in the war, covers the murder trial of a Japanese American fisherman, whose wife had been Ishmael's childhood sweetheart
Orphan Beth Harmon overcomes her fears and shyness by learning to play chess and, over the years, improves her game to become a national champion and to play the world grandmasters.