In the spring of 1927, after weeks of incessant rains, the Mississippi River went on a rampage from Cairo, Illinois to New Orleans, Louisiana, inundating hundreds of towns, killing as many as a thousand people and leaving a million people homeless. In Greenville, Mississippi, efforts to contain the river pitted the majority black population against an aristocratic white plantation family, the Percys. It also pitted the Percys against themselves. This is a dramatic true story of greed, power and race during one of America's greatest natural disasters.