Elizabeth Sydney’s film career spanned the Golden Age of Hollywood and barely survived the hunt for communists driven by Sen. Joseph McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee that produced a blacklist that shattered careers. Now she wants to be buried in her back yard and the will is invalid if she doesn’t get her way.

A combustible assortment of industry friends, family, former lovers, a man no one has hitherto heard of, half a dozen charitable beneficiaries, and an ungovernable horde of media descend on the small California town where she retired and picked out a spot in her oak grove. As they try to break the will, her reasons begin to surface in the story of an old betrayal of friends by friends and by the country’s own government.