In an alternate universe in Boston, 1899, women can no longer be killed at the hands of a man in a phenomenon dubbed "The Protection." Because of the Protection, when a single mother is arrested for tying up and starving her five-year-old son, the all-male police's attempts at executing her fail.
Edith Smylie, wife of the chief of police, volunteers to hang her. Between graphic case studies of men who've tried and failed to kill women in this new age, Edith spends her days up to the execution pondering internal and external doubts about her role and the misogyny entrenched in her town. On the day of the execution, Edith ties the noose around the mother's neck but hesitates at the lever to the trapdoor. Impatient, a policeman pushes his hand over hers, and the mother is hung. Edith opens the mother's hood to see if she's really dead.