The town of Thebes was once the jewel of Southern Illinois, but the river has turned poisonous, the crops are failing, and pregnant women and their unborn babies are dying mysterious deaths, all while the town's leader has locked himself away, leaving the residents to cast about for answers. Suspicion falls on Mellie, a young woman born with a serious disability. Despised from birth by the gods and barely tolerated by the rest of town, it falls on her and the other women of Thebes to wrest power from the man who has led them to catastrophe in this radical reimagining of the Oedipus myth.