Explore the controversial life and legacy of the three-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Carl Sandburg through archival footage and interviews with Pete Seeger, the late Studs Terkel and Norman Corwin, family, poets, and scholars. For much of the 20th century, Carl Sandburg (Jan. 6, 1878 – July 22, 1967) was synonymous with the American experience, a spokesman on behalf of “the people.” One of the most successful writers in the English language, Sandburg was a three-time Pulitzer Prize-winner for his poetry (Cornhuskers, 1918 and Complete Poems, 1950) and part of his six-volume Lincoln biography (Abraham Lincoln: The War Years, 1939). He was also a groundbreaking journalist, folk song collector, children’s storyteller, political organizer/activist, novelist, autobiographer, and captivating performer. Yet, after his death, Sandburg’s literary legacy faded and his poems, once taught in schools across America, were dismissed under the weight of massive critical attack.

Perry Miller Adato's first attempt to combine documentary techniques with dramatic re-enactment. The film uses actor John Cullum both as himself and to play the young Sandburg in short dramatic sequences. In search of Sandburg, Cullum travels to the poet's native home, Galesburg, Illinois speaking with close friends and family of the writer. Through a remarkable recently discovered trove of period photographs of Galesburg, the small-town America of Sandburg's childhood - the horse carriages, the ice-man delivering ice, a Fourth of July celebration - is revived in vivid detail.