White Mink

WHITE MINK is a story about four women in 1950s Richmond, Virginia. Josephine, a young black girl from Philadelphia ventures to Velvet Gardens, a former plantation, now bread and breakfast in Richmond Virginia in search of her mother's last days, only to suffer police brutality, class, and racial indifference. There is Rita Jane, who struggled to flee Velvet Garden with her high school love, only to return to her privileged upbringing as a ward of the house and wonder if she would go crazy under the shadow of Penelope. Penelope is the descendant of plantation slave owners who strives to enter politics by seizing the time to champion the Manifesto, the growing resistance to the Supreme Court's order to desegregate schools in the 1950s. She is aging and realizes her privileged upbringing and long love affair has provided no self value to her life. Odessa, the city's fervent social worker, is a constant agitation to the state's Jim Crow laws, yearns to be elected to office and resists her husband's fear for her safety.