Set in a rural town in Kansas, Goldie, a Mennonite school teacher and pacifist, is helping her husband campaign for re-election as a Kansas state senator. She fulfills her duty as a supportive wife without wanting to talk about politics. As they are out campaigning one day, she learns from a radio show that her husband was the deciding vote in helping to pass a new law that forces teachers to carry guns in classrooms. Goldie struggles with which moral value to hold higher, her non-violent pacifist beliefs or her marriage. She attempts to participate in the gun training, but cannot go through with it. Not wanting to stand up to her husband, she visits her estranged mother from a strict sect of Holdeman Mennonites. Meanwhile, her husband Jared meets with another state senator who reveals this vote was in exchange for support of Jared's re-election. Goldie and Jared's marital conflict finally comes to a head at the County Fair's Demolition Derby.