Its the last Christmas together in Depression era Alabama of a sensitive boy and his elderly cousin who was his closest friend. The two raise enough money to buy the ingredients for 30 fruit cakes, sent mostly to strangers like FDR. They spend Christmas day flying the kites the made for each while Capote's voice over explains their separation, followed by their dog's passing, and a few years later her's. (imdb)

On a hot day in Texas in the the 1890s, a stranger shows up at the small dairy farm of Royal and Ellie Thompson. He asks for work and is hired. He's a taciturn, English-speaking Swede from North Dakota; he's competent, strong, and good at farming and dairying. The years pass, the farm flourishes. Then one day a second stranger, also from North Dakota, Homer Hatch, arrives and lives are changed in ways no-one could have imagined.