Myrtle Kane and Jeb Thornton meet in the audience of a New Orleans based game show. On Myrtle's initiative, they are chosen as contestants on the show, on the host's assumption that they meet the required contestant profile: being a happy engaged couple. In order to win the special $3,500 cash prize from the show, they have to get married on the air, to which they both agree. The more exuberant Myrtle is the only surviving member of the Mobile Hot Shots, a five piece girls band from the city of the same name. She sees being married to Jeb just the next big adventure in her life. She does however truly begin to believe she loves him, or at least love the thought of being married. The outwardly more subdued Jeb wants to use his portion of the money to restore Waverley, his now run down family plantation located on the Mississippi River floodplain in Louisiana, to its former "Confederate" glory. He lives there reluctantly with his biracial half-brother Chicken, who he dislikes because.