The negative effects of alcohol and the equally negative effects of how to deal with the alcohol problem are shown on two families in the 1910s and 1920s, one family from the south and the other from the north. The Chilcotes are a well-off family in Louisiana. Maggie May Chilcote believes her father, the family patriarch Roger Chilcote, drinks too much by the effects she can see that it has on him. Maggie May and the rest of the family will learn just how profound an effect that drinking will have on them all. The Tarletons are a New York City working class family that operate a residential hotel. It is run largely by family matriarch Bertha Tarleton and her young adult son, Kip Tarleton, as Bertha's husband/Kip's father Pow Tarleton, is too irresponsible in his drinking, Kip, conversely, who has never had a drink in his life and has no desire ever to drink. Everything that Pow does, including working on the reelection campaign of President
Woodrow Wilson, is in the quest for alcohol. Their lives change with the introduction of Prohibition. However, problems from the alcohol still exist albeit in a different form due to the Prohibition.
—Huggo