Lilac Season takes place in Indianapolis at the exit of the Great War as men return, bringing shattered lives and ghosts in their wake. Lilly Dunbar is a burlesque dancer at The Flying Dutchman, attempting to start a new life far from home. She is already a woman with her own ghosts when her life is thrown into further turmoil by Mick Daugherty, a veteran, ring fighter and an Irish bootlegger with a past of his own and way of making danger look like destiny.
The story Lilly tells is one of sorrow and heartbreak, fleeing her small coastal Maine town when her fiancé Mal didn’t return from the war. It’s a clean story. Easier than the truth. But the truth is far murkier.
When she accepts Mick’s offer to be his “kept woman” she does not anticipate more than the celluloid glamor and giddy fascination of being his mistress. But a liaison with Mick Daugherty is not without its risks and Lilly is soon immersed into Mick’s world of clandestine deals and dangerous power plays, where loyalty is tested and survival is never guaranteed. The Irish and Italian underground are always at war with one another and ruthlessness is the name of the game.
When Mick disappears and Lilly is left to face the lowest point of her life alone, a letter come from home beckoning her back. She goes back to face her ghosts and darker shadows, knowing nothing will ever be the same again. When her role in something long-buried is exposed, she flees again to Indianapolis—where she must confront what it truly means to love, and where her loyalty lies when the final truth is revealed.