Forty-six-year-old Reverend Ernst Toller is the pastor of the historic First Reformed Church in upstate New York. Still grieving the death of his son and his failed marriage, he keeps a private journal while struggling with loneliness, illness, and alcohol. When a young congregant asks him to speak with her husband, an environmental activist troubled by climate change and the future of the world, Toller is drawn into a crisis of faith, guilt, and despair.