Margerie is a southern matriarch who rules and manipulates her family, constituents, friends, and self through the age old ploy of denial. They are a family of three generations of southern women who come together, in the middle of Margerie's political campaign, and the sudden illness of the family's patriarch, Noel. The women struggle to survive their own unresolved conflicts, to survive the July heat, and to survive the family secrets that unravel publicly in their small southern town.