Peggy Hennessy, who now works at the Los Angeles Times, comes home to New Orleans to testify in a sex discrimination trial against her former employer, the Times-Item newspaper. Her best friend Emmaline Pickett still works at the Item. Mimi Delery is a member of New Orleans’ Uptown aristocracy. Harry Madere clings to the fringes of the city’s working class.

When the lives and pasts of these four people scrape against one another like the bumper cars at Pontchartrain Beach, the ricochets are funny and the retribution tragic—for them and for the other memorable characters in this novel of interwoven stories about the Big Easy.

Film pitch: Our Town meets Crash.