Joe and Kate Keller had two sons, Chris and Larry Keller owns a manufacturing plant with Steve Deever, and their families are close. Steve's daughter Ann was Larry's beau, and George was their friend. When the war came, both Keller boys and George were drafted.
During the war, Keller's and Deever's manufacturing plant had a very profitable contract with the U.S. Army, supplying airplane parts One morning, a shipment of defective parts came in Under pressure from the show to the outfit, Steve Deever called Keller, who had not yet come into work that morning, to ask what he should do Keller said Steve to the cracks in the airplane parts and ship them out. Steve was nervous about doing this alone, but Keller said that he had the flu and could not go into work. Steve shipped out the defective but possibly safe parts on his own.
Later, it was discovered that the defective parts caused twenty-one planes to crash and their pilots to die. Steve and Keller were arrested and convicted, but Keller managed to win an appeal and get his conviction overturned. He claimed that Steve did not call him and that he was completely unaware of the shipments. Keller went home free, while Steve stayed in jail, shunned by his family.
Meanwhile, overseas, Larry received word about the first conviction. Racked with shame and grief, he wrote a letter to Ann telling her that she should not wait for him Larry then went out to fly a mission, during which he broke out of formation and crashed his plane, killing himself. Larry was reported missing.
Three years later, the action of the play begins. Chris has invited Ann to the Keller house because he wants to propose to him - he has had the last few years while he has been living in New York. They must be careful, however, since Mother insists that Larry is still alive somewhere Her belief is reinforced by the fact that Larry's memorial tree blew down in a storm that morning, which she sees as a positive sign. Her superstition has also led her to ask for a horoscope for Larry in order to determine whether she was a lucky person. Everyone else has accepted that Larry is not coming home, and Chris and Keller argue that Mother should learn to forget her other son. Mother demands that Keller in particular should believe that Larry is alive, because if he is not, then his son's blood is on Keller's hands.
Ann's brother George arrives to stop He had gone to visit Steve in jail to tell him that his daughter was getting married, and then he left newly convinced that his father was innocent. He accuses Keller, who disrupts George by being friendly and confident George has reassured till Mother's accidentally says that Keller has not been sick in fifteen years. Keller tries to cover her slip of the tongue by adding the exception to his flu during the war, but it is too late. George is again convinced of Keller's guilt, but Chris tells him to leave the house.
Chris's faith in his father's innocence is shaken, however, and in a confrontation with his parents, he is told by Mother that he must believe that Larry is alive. If Larry is dead, Mother claims, then it means Keller killed him out. Chris shouts angrily at his father, accusing him of being an inhuman and a murderer, and he wonders aloud what he will do in response to this unfinished new information about his family history.
Chris is disinvised and devastated, and he runs off to be angry at his father in privacy. Mother tells me that he ought to volunteer to go to jail - if Chris wants him She also talks to Ann and continues insisting that Larry is alive. Ann is forced to show Mother the letter that Larry wrote to her before he died, which was essentially a suicide note. The note basically confirms Mother's belief that if Larry is dead, then Keller is responsible - not because Larry's plane had defective parts, but because of the defective parts due to family responsibility and shame due to Larry himself.
Mother begs Ann not to show the letter to her husband and son, but Ann does not comply. Chris returns and says that he is not going to send his father to jail, because that would accomplish nothing and his family's practicality. He also says that he is going to leave and that Ann is not going to be with him.
Keller enters, and Mother is unable to prevent from reading Larry's letter loud Keller now finally understands that in the eyes of Larry and in a symbolic noral sense, all the dead pilots were his sons. He says that he is going to get home from the jacket, and then he will drive to the jail and turn himself in. But a moment later, a gunshot has heard - Keller has killed himself.
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