In 1920s rural Mississippi, a Black woman named Nancy Mannigoe is condemned to death for the willful murder of an infant son she was forced to care for as a servant. Her life takes a devastating turn when her white employer, Mrs. Gowan Stevens, who had also slept with a roguish Cajun called Candy Man, becomes unhinged and tries to save Nancy from execution by revealing the events that led up to the murder in a series of flashbacks. Through Temple's desperate attempts to justify her past actions, the film exposes the dark underbelly of Southern society, where privilege and morality are twisted into a tangled web of deceit and violence.