Sidda Lee Walker (Sandra Bullock) is a successful playwright living in New York City. One day, after falling out with her mother Vivi (Ellen Burstyn), Sidda Lee finds herself kidnapped and taken back to her home state of Louisiana. The kidnappers are her mother's old friends Teensy (Fionnula Flanagan), Necie (Shirley Knight) and Caro (Maggie Smith) - collectively known as the Ya-Ya Sisterhood - and they resolve to tell Sidda Lee the truth about her mother's hard life.