The playwright Arthur Miller built a career out of probing the human cost of broken dreams. His iconic everyman, Willy Loman from Death of a Salesman, rails against an economic system that devalues and crushes those who have given their lives to sustain it. As Loman discovers near the end of his life, hard work isn’t always enough. When a privileged few control the levers of power, the working man has far less agency than the American myth would have him believe. The American dream rests on a tenuous foundation, part mythology, part reality. While there have always been American success stories—Andrew Carnegie, J.P. Morgan, Bill Gates, to name a few—these stories are the exception, and they serve as a convenient propagation of the myth. For the most part, average people of average means will never reach millionaire or billionaire status.

Still, the myth of the American Dream is powerful and continues to hold sway. It drives countless immigrants to the borders in search of a better life. It expects hard work, conformity, and some degree of assimilation, and many immigrants abide by those rules. Tony and Rose Martinelli arrive at America’s shores with almost nothing. They build their life from scratch through tenacity and labor and by following the rules of a system they believe in.