In 1965, sixteen-year-old Sylvia Likens (Ellen Page) and her disabled 15-year-old sister, Jenny (Hayley McFarland) enjoy themselves at a carnival circuit. Their parents, Lester (Nick Searcy) and Betty (Romy Rosemont), who work at the carnival circuit, reconcile their previously estranged relationship and agree to go on a tour together. To cope with these changes, they decide to leave the Likens sisters in the care of an impoverished single mother named Gertrude Baniszewski (Catherine Keener), since they have befriended her children at church.