Three southern sisters try to come to grips with the meaning of their mother's suicide.

Three sisters with quite different personalities and lives reunite when Babe, the youngest, has just shot her husband. Oldest sister Lenny takes care of their grandfather and is turning into an old maid. Meg, who aspires to make it in Hollywood as a singer and actress, has had a wild, man-filled life. Their reunion is joyful but also stirs up much tension.—Leon Wolters <[email protected]>

As children, the now-adult Magrath sisters moved to Hazelhurst, Mississippi to live with their grandparents after their father abandoned the family and their mother subsequently hanged herself in the basement, which made national headlines Lenny, the eldest, still lives in the house taking care of ailing Granddaddy; next door their first cousin, stuck-up Chick Boyle, thinks the scandal of the suicide affected her the most, socially. A frumpy spinster with little experience with men, Lenny is the forgotten one. Meg, the middle sister, is the narcissistic wild child who left for Hollywood to pursue a singing career, which is not going as well as she would like those at home to think. Growing up, she generally got what she wanted as the extroverted one and arguably because she was the one who found Momma in the basement. "Who" she wanted was Doc Porter, who now walks with a limp due to an incident with Meg, but would probably run back to her if she returned--despite being married. Becky "Babe" Magrath, the youngest, married Zackery Botrelle at 18; now he's a lawyer and state senator but she is the overgrown-little-princess kind of wife. Despite Meg being the one who found Momma, Babe is the one who thinks about the why behind Momma's suicide the most. Meg is called back to Hazelhurst with the news that Babe has shot Zackery. He survived--he's in the hospital recovering from the stomach wound--and Babe doesn't deny shooting him; she claims she was actually aiming for his heart. But she refuses to tell anyone, including her young lawyer Barnett Lloyd, why she did it. The dynamic among the very different but loving sisters plays into how they deal with Babe's situation and their own issues.—Huggo