Following the death of his estranged mother, a button-down exec and his freewheeling girlfriend return to his conservative Arkansas hometown, where terrible family secrets shatter his picket-fence worldview.

SYNOPSIS:

While cocky, 30 y/o exec CYRUS McHENRY exudes a passion for his hustle-culture, Chicago job, he’s also pulled backwards by his problematic, rural southern roots, like craving a colonial house he can’t afford to buy. He’s also caught between his love for his brash, early 20s girlfriend JACKIE, and disdain for her carefree, digital-nomad life. He's ready to commit to a life together, but she chafes at his not-so-subtle overtures. However, when he resists making the long drive home for his mother’s funeral, protesting that he’ll lose a promotion by missing work, it’s Jackie who figures out it’s really because he’s still holding on to the angry hurt from Mom abruptly abandoning their close relationship when he was ten. She won’t let him hide from either the hurt or his family, however, driving him home in her retro VW van.

At his crumbling, colonial homestead on a derelict Arkansas farm, Cy fights with his cynical younger brother JERRY about anything and everything, but makes excuses to Jackie for the tone-deaf rants from their larger-than-life father AMOS, who controls the small town with both money and intimidation. Jackie actually delights in gigging Amos by letting her bold, feminist flag fly.

After an oddly hurry-up funeral, Cy discovers Amos had Cy's mom, KATHERINE, cremated on the sly, which in Amos’ extreme religious worldview consigns her to hell. Shocked at this deception, Cy—with the sheriff—confronts the funeral home director who admits that Amos demanded both a cremation and a burial. The sheriff orders the coffin dug up, and Cy is shocked to discover it held scores of mementos from his childhood that Katherine had kept—against his orders, Amos angrily tells them. Seeing them brings Cy’s first tears since her death. Why’d she quit on him? Why did Dad want to send her to hell and bury his past? Refusing to explain himself, Amos instead offers Cy a bargain price on the house Amos’ granddad built on the place—the one where Katherine had lived like a hermit for the last 20 years—if he’ll move back and take over the place—a prospect that horrifies Jackie. In order to make the agonizing decisions about his own future, including where he and Jackie go from there, Cy must first uncover the truth about his mom’s mysterious death—and life.

The powerful character journeys, and universal—though not universally recognized—themes in The Secret Ministry of Grass will have wide audience appeal, but will especially resonate with younger audiences who are hungry for a meaningful life ethic that can help them make sense of today’s divisive world.

THE SECRET MINISTRY OF GRASS