The screenplay tells the story of Fisher Willow (Howard), the disliked 1920s Memphis debutante daughter of a plantation owner with a distaste for narrow-minded people and a penchant for shocking and insulting those around her.

After returning from studies overseas, Fisher falls in love with Jimmy (Evans), the down-and-out son of an alcoholic father (Strathairn) and an insane mother who works at a store on her family's plantation. She tries to pass him off as an upper-class suitor to appease the spinster aunt (Ann-Margret) who controls her family's fortune, but when she loses a diamond, it places their tenuous relationship in further jeopardy. Burstyn is attached to play Fisher's mother.