Jo, the firstborn, "The General" to her 11 sisters, is the only thing the Hamilton girls have in place of a mother. Together, they elude their distant and controlling father, until the day he decides to marry them all off. Meanwhile, the girls continue to dance until one night when they are caught in a raid, separated, and Jo is thrust face-to-face with someone from her past: a bootlegger named Tom whom she hasn’t seen in almost 10 years.