In 1973 New Orleans, on the sweltering night a fire tears through the Upstairs Lounge, killing thirty-two men, nineteen-year-old nursing student Sydney “Syd” Trahan is arrested for dancing at a nearby lesbian bar, an act that detonates long-simmering tensions within her devout, working-class family. As her father, Bud, basks in public praise for a professional honor and her mother, Helen, struggles to reconcile faith, reputation, and maternal fear, their neighbors Beau and Beverly Larson confront the consequences of their own cruelty toward their gay son, Roscoe, now among the dead. Over the course of two harrowing days, secrets surface, hypocrisies are exposed, and private reckonings unfold against a backdrop of religious fervor and communal tragedy. SYD is a searing domestic drama about shame, complicity, and the cost of survival in a world that mistakes intolerance for righteousness.
