A family struggles to stay together in this Fresh out of a treatment program and back home, Rhonda tries to stay clean and to get her kids back. Her youngest two have been living with their father, across town and in another world. Champ, her eldest, has been holding it down in the neighborhood, trying to keep on track, in school, and doing the right thing by his mother and little brothers.
However, the lure of the street and the need for money has pulled him into the ubiquitous drug trade. As Rhonda looks for work, turns to God, does her level best to avoid the people and the haunts of her crack-smoking days, her son Champ dares to dream a solution: a house, and a united family under one roof. In a misguided effort to secure funds for a family home, he tumbles deeper and deeper into the rough trade of drug dealing.
Told in a voice that sings with the rhythms of poetry and the language of the street, The Residue Years is about a world of few choices and little opportunity, of drug dealers and drug users, sometimes within the same family. But mostly it's about family against all odds: a son's guarded love for his mother and a mother desperate for a second chance at love with her sons.