New York performance artist Gwen Kubacky thinks no one cares about feminist art anymore, until young art student Emma Firestein approaches her to become a mentor. Gwen agrees, hoping this legacy can be passed on to a new generation. As it happens Emma's mother, Dana Firestein, is a woman who co-founded a legendary radical feminist school in the 1970s--Labrys--which Gwen attended.
Gwen's tutelage of Emma has barely begun when the young woman is raped and murdered during a night out clubbing. Dana's comrades rally from far and near, as do friends of Emma's, and they gather in the only possible space, Gwen's warehouse loft.
The young women disdain the judgmental old fossils they're cooped up with. And to the women of Labrys, this alien new generation, with its ignorance of its radical roots and birth in feminism, appears ungrateful if not worthless.
But heretical challenges to old beliefs surface among Dana's contemporaries, as do truths long held secret. And among the younger women are those who possess more than enough rage and radical belief to take action to avenge Emma's murder.