In a rural Midwestern town, three women facing the overlapping challenges of sexual-orientation, abusive men, and racial prejudice find heartrending commonality during a polio epidemic and band together to run a revenge-seeking mobster out of town.

SYNOPSIS:

Bonnie Belanger, 34, a bisexual artist and housepainter who spent the Second World War brightening the town with vibrant colors and uplifting murals. She has accepted casual guardianship of her husband’s illegitimate child, Sam, but struggles to balance her relationship with his mother, Sarah. Even more challenging is nurturing her love affair with Janet in her husband’s caustic presence.

Janet Gray, 28, a lesbian nurse on the run from a forced mob marriage, she experiences horrifying flashbacks from her time in an insane asylum for conversion therapy. She’s madly in love with Bonnie, but fears sharing her past.

Sarah Jones, 26, an African American baker with no family except her younger brother, Lenny, and son, Sam. Sam is the product of an affair with Bonnie’s husband, Joe, before the war. She supplies baked goods to homes and businesses but is relegated to the back door for her race. She is ashamed of her past with Joe but clings to hope that Bonnie will one day forgive her.

Joe Belanger, 36, Bonnie’s unrepentant husband. Back from the war, he’s still the asshole he always was and revels any opportunity to torment Bonnie. He scorns his history with Sarah and repudiates Sam.

Melvin Fleet, 25, rookie private eye burning shoe leather on behalf of the mob. He’s narrowing in on an escaped bride, Janet, formerly Antoinette Marchesi.

Georgia Madrone, 22, aspiring actress, Fleet’s fiancé and his impromptu career coach. Along for the ride, she complicates Fleet’s mission.

Overview

“The Kindred” is a Crime Drama that challenges the social norms of today in the crucible of a 1945 polio epidemic. The strong prejudices against the three protagonists were relatively ignored during the war years. But now, with polio cases flooding the hospital and children dying, the women must interact openly and there’s no hiding their histories and orientations. Intensifying these conflicts are the galling influences of Joe, who is a distillation of the town’s prejudice, and Janet’s mob ex-husband; the women must come clean about their own lies, because its only by trusting each other that they can overcome these men.

The point is to show that everyone is fallible. These women are so preoccupied trying to hide from the town that they live hiding from themselves. It’s a double whammy of female repression: community and self-denial. As the protagonists ‘come out’ more to the town, the town must face its own prejudice and begin to judge the women for what they contribute rather than their race and sexual orientation. Furthermore, the polio epidemic is to emphasize the terror caused by disease in the absence of lifesaving vaccines.

Synopsis

1945 is the year of honeymoons, but for Bonnie Belanger, her husband Joe’s return signals the end of one. Her relaxed, if secret relationship with her lover and town nurse, Janet Gray, must now go deep underground as must her tentative closeness with Joe’s former “Negro” lover, Sarah Jones. Sarah is the mother of his illegitimate son, Sam. Though beloved for her baked goods, Sarah must nonetheless cart her wares through narrow alleys to back entrances. She resents her passivity as she resents the weakness that led her to fall into Joe’s arms for comfort and scant cash. But that was before the war, when she was terrified her brother would starve to death in the night. What little she’s forgiven herself is based on Bonnie’s love for Sam, a blessed child by all accounts.

The town is blazoned with Bonnie’s joyful wartime murals that fortified its hope against the Nazis, but her brush is no match for Joe when he’s drunk. Despite his jibes, flagrant idleness, and crude sexual advances, she refuses to leave him. Janet gently encourages her, but Bonnie’s reticence strains their relationship. Even when Bonnie tries to prove otherwise, Janet’s sure she still loves Joe. Bonnie’s only motivation is to protect Janet, but she doesn’t know the most dangerous thing – Janet’s own past.

When polio strikes, Sam is among the first to succumb and dies quickly, relegated to the ghostly, ‘colored’ ward of the hospital. Sarah, Bonnie, and Janet are stricken, but must hide their communal mourning within the rising chaos. Janet buries herself in nearly unbearable nurse work, tending to dying children and their families. It’s in the hospital she meets an out-of-town reporter looking for the scoop on the outbreak. But Melvin Fleet is a private eye on a mobster’s payroll - prowling for an escaped bride whose assumed identity is can no longer protect her. The wildcard is Fleet’s fiancée, Georgia Madrone, an aspiring actress who won’t stop hounding Fleet with her liberated ideas.

With Sam’s death, the three women realize they must embrace their bonds and let go of the erroneous belief that men will save them. It’s just in time too.

A bisexual artist, a lesbian nurse, and a ‘colored’ baker—three unlikely kin.