During the Great Depression, the common people - dispossessed of their farms, homes, and livelihoods - romanticized those who operated outside the system: Dillinger, Bonnie and Clyde, Pretty Boy Floyd. In "The Second Coming of Jesse James," these same common people hail Jack Carpenter - moonshiner, hell raiser, and third-rate bank robber - as a latter day Jesse James sent to deliver them from the scourge of banks and other "vested interests." When Jack tries to live up to his own myth, he sets out on a path leading to both tragedy and redemption.