In 1950s Jim Crow Mississippi, a 17-year-old boy, Tiger, risks his life and ventures to the other side that divides black and white. Maybelle, pubescent and fair, tornadoes into his life. Both throw caution aside and surrender blindly to a forbidden love that the South has fought for years to keep whites separate and untainted. The two meeting forces others to drag their murky past forward, unearthing demons they’ve tried arduously to keep buried, progressively changing each one’s life forever.