From the decks of a steamship that brings Sigmund Freud to America for a lecture tour, hundreds of European immigrants strain for a glimpse of the promised land. As they approach, they are sure they can only be passing through the gates of heaven...or hell.

Among the thousands of immigrants who arrive in New York harbor is an Eastern European stowaway called Kid Twist, who soon earns his keep as an enforcer for the ruthless gangster Gyp the Blood. When Kid is pressed to murder an informer in a police corruption investigation that threatens to bring down the powerful political machine of Tammany Hall, Kid brutally splits with Gyp, leaving him bleeding from a shovel wound to the head in a rancid basement on the Lower East Side.

His life now in jeopardy, Kid flees across the East River to Brooklyn.

While hiding in Coney Island, Kid Twist meets young Esther Abramowitz, a shirtwaist seamstress who labors under inhuman conditions to support a frail mother and embittered father. As their love affair blossoms, Esther emerges from quiet shopworker to foot soldier in the burgeoning labor movement in the days leading to the cataclysmic Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire. Changed by love, Kid, too, is no longer the ruthless scavenger he once was.

As he prepares for an electrifying showdown with the vengeful Gyp the Blood, the police corruption case intensifies, wreaking havoc for ruthless Tammany Hall politician Big Tim Sullivan, who sees his control over this raw, dynamic city slowly slipping away.