Lifetime Members focuses on the investigation by Attorney Walter Chauncey Coleman into the violent death of a black migrant worker in Anthracite County, Pennsylvania, and on the various men and women drawn into the orbit of that investigation. In the course of his often reluctant search for the truth in the maze of lies and coverup --- a search that concludes with a second violent fatality--- Coleman learns not only that we are all members, more or less for life, of families, of neighborhoods, of nationalities and religions and social tiers, but also that all memberships come with dues.