All My Sons concerns a manufacturer of aircraft engines, Joe Keller, who, under pressure of wartime production, allows a batch of faulty cylinder heads to be supplied to the Army Air Force in the knowledge that they may cause catastrophic failure and thus endanger life. He does so rather than risk losing his contract and thus possibly his business, the business he wishes to pass to his sons. In the subsequent court case he denies responsibility, insisting that he had not visited the plant on the day in question and allowing his employee and neighbour, Steve Deever, to take the blame. At the time, Deever's daughter, Ann, had been engaged to the Kellers' son, Larry, himself serving in the Air Force. Following their father's conviction both she and her brother, George, sever all connection with their father, refusing to visit him in prison, or even to write to him. To sustain his own family, Keller sacrifices another.

When Larry, a pilot, goes missing, Kate Keller refuses to acknowledge his death, not least because to do so would be to accept a symbolic connection between her husband's action and her own loss. The play opens as their other son, Chris Keller, invites Ann to stay, intending to propose a marriage which will, effectively, signify public acknowledgement of Larry's death and thus precipitate a crisis for all of them as past and present are brought into immediate confrontation. The action takes place in less than twenty-four hours.