Explores the explosive tensions of the South in the mid-1950s through the prism of a young girl's friendship with her black maid and the currents of violence, infidelity, and corruption that run beneath the polite surface of her family's life.
Exploited by the white family that took him in as a servant fifteen years earlier, groundskeeper August Sitwell becomes tragically enraged by how his employers mindlessly profit from the talents of a hired Black cook.