In 1955, Emmitt Till is murdered in Mississippi, an event that drives Elizabeth Lacey - the unwitting architect of another cruel lynching - to madness. Consumed by guilt, Elizabeth takes her own life, leaving her four-year-old daughter in the care of her extended family. Seven years later, the precocious Kansas Lacey is intensely curious about a world she devours through "National Geographic" magazines and endless questions to the adults around her. When her curiosity extends to the circumstances of her mother"s suicide, the dark history of repression, addiction, and violence surrounding the prominent and respected Lacey family finally emerges.