The widow of a Union soldier believes she has the power, through an ancestor hanged as a witch, to curse the Rebel executioner of her husband. At the close of the war the obsessed widow follows her victim through the ravaged South, and several years later brings about his death through the supposed curse on his family. For three generations the Kane curse, feared by the women of the Kane family and hidden from the men they love, strikes in the small town of Eden, carried out through the appearance of a "lady in black" who is a descendant of the widow and bent on a horrible revenge. In the present day, brothers Barney and Ed McRae, an attorney and a minister, are intended victims and must decipher the curse and stop it before they are executed. Odd items in an old chest reveal the workings of the "lady in black" in each generation and the stories of her victims. Always present is the question of whether this is a curse or a murderous revenge so deep it obsesses one family and destroys another. The grim contest between these men marked for death and their unknown executioner ends in a daring confrontation with the "lady in black," resulting in a final death and the end of the curse.