New York, early 1930s. A mysterious, laconic Irish colossus known as 'Giant' sweats blood, along with his fellow immigrants, to build the skyscrapers of Rockefeller Center. For a while, he has not received a reply to the typewritten letters he continues to send, as well as money, to the other side of the ocean, to Mary Ann, the wife of one of his colleagues who died accidentally.
Harlem, 1931. In the heart of the Great Depression, invention is the mother of necessity to make ends meet.Stéphanie St. Clair, known as Queenie , had already understood this when she landed in New York almost twenty years before. Inventiveness when you are a woman and you are black is much more than a necessity. It's a question of survival.In a few years, this young immigrant West Indian servant freed herself from the weight of ancestral servitude. Even better, she created her own American dream: the underground Harlem numbers game.Hers is an ascent that makes people cringe, both with the local authorities and the white mafia.