Ten-year-old Joan, her mother and her younger sister flee her father’s explosive temper and seek refuge at her mother’s ancestral home in Memphis. Half a century earlier, Joan’s grandfather built this majestic house in the historic Black neighborhood of Douglass --- only to be lynched days after becoming the first Black detective in the city. Joan tries to settle into her new life, but family secrets cast a longer shadow than any of them expected. As she grows up, Joan finds relief in her artwork. One of her subjects is their enigmatic neighbor Miss Dawn, who claims to know something about curses, and whose stories about the past help Joan see how her passion, imagination and relentless hope are, in fact, the continuation of a long matrilineal tradition.