In a Chicago suburb, conflict flares: a reading by an LBGTQ+ author is canceled when the library hosting the event receives violent threats on social media and a single bullet is dropped in the outside book return. The police cannot guarantee safety at the event and the library regrettably cancels the reading. Christine Bernard, a retired nurse, rallies her friends to protest the book banning group in her village, and one morning while filling the bird feeders in her front yard, is gunned down and killed by three men in a passing car. They are arrested and linked to neo-Nazi and white supremacist ideology. The murder shocks the suburb and devastates Terry, the victim’s husband.

He inherits his wife’s friends and their activism, battling the homophobic, racist, anti-science, book banning, misogynistic, Christo-fascists trying to enforce their beliefs on the library, the school board, and the village council. Christine’s friends, especially her progressive women’s group, embrace the widower, acting as an impromptu support group to console him in his grief. His friend, Ferguson, also comforts Terry, and during a discussion one afternoon, when Terry vents his anger at the men who killed his wife, Ferguson dismisses the trio as pawns, telling Terry that if he wants to exact revenge, he should cut off the head of the snake, warning however. that the mythical hydra, when its head was severed, grew two back in its place. From that hypothetical conversation, Terry formulates a plan.