1902 President of the United States - Teddy Roosevelt.

The city of Kew Rochelle, New York. On the fashionable Krugozora Avenue, in a house on a hill lined with Norwegian maples, a family lives - Grandfather, Father, Mother, Toddler and Younger Brother of Mother (MBM). Family life is full of spirituality and fanned with goodness.

The kid is extremely passionate about the tricks of the artist-escapist Harry Houdini. By chance, Houdini appears in their house - on the road near the hill, his car breaks down. But the damage has been fixed, Houdini is going to leave. The kid stands near the car and looks at his reflection in a copper headlight. “Warn the Archduke,” he suddenly says and runs away. Many years later, on the day of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s death, Houdini recalls this as the only truly mystical event in his life.

A few days after this incident, Father is leaving for a polar expedition. In the ocean, their ship meets a transatlantic liner full of immigrants. This spectacle depresses the Father. Actually, he himself does not get to the pole, because his left heel freezes regularly.

Immigrants: Mom, Aunt and Baby. Small room on the Lower East Side. All three work from morning to night. For an extra dollar, Mamma is inferior to the harassment of her employer. The aunt drives her out of the house and from grief turns into a gray-haired crazy old man.

Well-known model Evelyn Nesbit is involved in the trial of the murder of his former lover architect Stanford White. The killer is her husband Harry Kay Fsou. This process creates the first sex goddess in American history. One day, obeying a whim, she calls in poor neighborhoods and meets Tyatya with Baby there. But at a rally of socialists, anarchist spokeswoman Red Emma Goldman reveals her incognito. The horror grabs the Baby and disappears. Goldman leads Evelyn to himself. MBM, secretly in love with Evelyn, follows them. When Goldman massages Evelyn, he suddenly spills out of the closet with a yell of ecstasy. Evelyn takes him to her lovers, but very soon escapes from him with the following. The trial of her husband ends with Fsou being sent to a criminal psychiatry hospital. His lawyers are starting negotiations on a divorce. Evelyn sets the price - a million, but receives only twenty-five thousand.

After the ill-fated rally, Tyut and Baby go wherever they look. During the next transfer from tram to tram, Mother and Baby pass by them. Children meet their eyes, and the Baby forever remembers the color of his eyes: blue with yellow and green spots.

At this point in our story, Theodore Dreiser is suffering from the failure of his first book, Sister Kerry. Sigmund Freud arrives in America to give a series of lectures. The obese man William Howard Taft becomes President of the United States, and gluttony comes into fashion. Artist Harry Houdini learns to fly on an airplane. The images of Ancient Egypt capture all minds.

The great financier Jay Pirpont Morgan invites Henry Ford, the inventor of the assembly line, to his white marble library, built to house books and works of art that Morgan is buying around the world. He sets out to Ford his theory of transcendentally gifted personalities. Ford recognizes the possibility of its sacred origin. Subsequently, they establish an exclusive club that finances certain searches. In New Rochelle, Mother finds a black woman buried in the ground but still alive. An hour later, in the basement of a house in the neighboring quarter, the police find a very young black woman named Sarah. Mother leaves her and the baby in the house. Together with them, a feeling of misfortune settles in the house.

Aunt and Baby now live in Lawrence, Massachusetts. To entertain the little ones, he makes books out of his silhouettes - such paper cartoons. At the weaving mill where he works, a strike begins. The strike committee invites the Tyä to send Baby to Philadelphia. But at the time of the solemnly organized departure of children, the police disperse the workers with shots. Tyata and Baby miraculously manage to jump on the train. The strike was won, but Tyatya no longer wants to go to the factory. Wandering along the streets of Philadelphia with him, Baby draws attention to the window of a toy store. A guy immediately goes to the owner of the store and concludes a contract with him for the production of cartoon books. So the life of the Ten enters the stream of American energy.

In the house in New Rochelle appears Kolhaus Walker the Younger - an elegant, confident black pianist. This is the father of Sarin's baby. Since then, he goes every Sunday, makes Sarah an offer, but she does not want to see him. Once he is invited to the house. At the request of the Father, he sits down at the piano, performs ragtime and conquers everyone with his play. Only in March did Sarah finally agree.

MBM now manages the fireworks department of the Father’s pyrotechnic enterprise. His latest invention resembles a bomb. He understands that he can improve many types of weapons. Trying to track down Evelyn Nesbit, he accidentally gets to Congress in support of the Mexican revolution, after which he converges with Emma Goldman. Returning to New Rochelle between the carriages of the dairy train, he wonders whether to rush under the wheels. The noise of the train reminds him of the sounds of a reggae - suicidal reg.

One Sunday at a fire station, they suddenly block the path to the Kolhaus house. Fireman Willie Conklin claims to be a private toll road. Kolkhaus goes for a policeman, but he does not even consider it necessary to go to the scene. Upon returning, Kolhaus finds his Ford T crippled and broken. He demands to wash and repair the car. The police are coming. The next day, the Father pledges, and Kolhaus is released. The father recommends that he consult a lawyer. But not one of the lawyers wants to help Kolhaus. White - because he is black, black - because he is rich. He tries in vain to go to court himself, and writes a complaint in the police station in vain. Then Sarah decides to protect her fiance herself. But her cry from the crowd meeting Vice President Jim Sherman is catching the attention of the police. Father and Mother find Sarah in the hospital. Kolhaus does not depart from her bed. By the end of the week, Sarah is dying from beating. For wedding money, Kolkhaus arranges her a chic funeral.

And so he goes on the warpath. Explodes two fire stations. He leaves letters to the editorial offices of local newspapers in which he demands trial of the firewall manager Willie Conklin and car repair. Threatens terror. The city begins to panic. All blacks are hiding. Father goes to the police and tells everything there that he knows about Kolhaus.

MBM from the very beginning on the side of Kolhaus. Having sought his battle headquarters in the bowels of Harlem, he offers his help as an explosive. He shaves bald and paints his face with a burnt cork, so as not to differ from the young blacks - the assistants of Kolhaus.

The family drives off to Atlantic City, away from these events. Mother is quite happy with the society that gathers there. Foreigners seem more interesting to her than compatriots. Baron Ashkenazi, a successful movie businessman, falls into her field of vision. This is another transformation of the Ten. Now his concern is for Baby to forget all their sad past. Baby with Baby become inseparable friends.

But the kolhausovskaya story continues. Father is being called to New York.

Colehouse and his companions enter the Pirpont Morgan library and threaten to destroy it. The library is mined. Police set up headquarters in the building opposite. There comes New York District Attorney Charles Es Whitman. He understands that he is embroiled in a politically dangerous business. Emma Goldman at the time of arrest makes a statement in support of Kolhaus, which falls into the newspapers. The most famous black man of his time, the great enlightener Booker T. Washington, on the contrary, condemns this action. Whitman asks Washington to use his authority to resolve the situation. Booker T. Washington and Kolhaus talk among great works of art and historical values. Colehouse agrees to surrender, but helpers must be let go and Willie Conklin must fix the car himself. Here comes a telegram from D.P. Morgan. Morgan demands to give the car and then hang Kolhaus. The car is pulled out of the pond. The father goes to the library as an intermediary and then remains as an official hostage. In amazement, he meets his brother-in-law there, who at night safely leaves with the rest of his associates in the finally repaired Ford T. After their departure, Kolhaus requests the Father to tell him about his son, to the smallest detail. Two hours later, the Kolkhaus goes outside with his hands up. A detachment of police point-blank shoots him.

Companions of Kolhaus give MBM the ill-fated Ford. On it, the MBM goes to Mexico, where it participates in the Mexican revolution on the side of the rebels. As a result of his activities as an explosive, he stalls and eventually dies in a shootout with government forces.

Woodrow Wilson becomes President of the United States. The Hague opens the Peace Palace. In Vienna, a conference of socialists. In Paris, abstract artists appear. Pirpont Morgan goes to Egypt to spend the night inside the pyramid and learn the essence of ancient philosophy. But it gets only a runny nose and bites of bugs. He soon dies in Rome. Following his death, the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand takes place. Harry Houdini, recalling the prophecy of the Kid, pays a visit to New Rochelle, but no one catches. Grandfather is gone. Mother, Toddler and the Negro Kolhaus Walker Third on the coast of Maine, where Mother poses for the artist Winslow Homer. Father in Washington is negotiating the introduction of new weapons invented by MBM. In 1915, he went to London on the British ship Lusitania with the first batch of grenades and bombs for the Allies. A German submarine torpedoes a ship, and Father dies. An immigrant in this life, like every person, in his last expedition he arrives at the shores of His Essence. A year later, Mother marries the Tyatya. They are moving to California. The movie business is doing well. Ragtime era is a thing of the past.