Retiro Tuga

As a young girl in the early 1900s Lena Baker (Tichina Arnold) and her mother (Beverly Todd) make ends meet by picking cotton in the hot southern sun of rural Cuthbert, Georgia. Lena grows up to work as a prostitute during the Roaring Twenties in an attempt to make enough money to head north and start anew. She is arrested before her dream is realized and sentenced to ten months of hard labor. Returning from this grueling experience and reuniting with her mother on the dusty road near their home, it is clear that Lena is changed forever.Years later, it seems that Lena has finally overcome her inner demons. She has three young children, she no longer drinks, she attends church regularly and helps her mother with their weekly laundry work. Just when it seems Lena may be able to forget the sorrow of her past, she is called to work for Elliot Arthur (Peter Coyote), a tyrannical white man known in Cuthbert for his angry disposition and drinking. Over time, Lena and Elliot develop a highly-charged relationship, filled with alcohol, cruelty and a troubling need for one another. Lena Baker was the first and only woman to be sentenced to death by the electric chair in the state of Georgia and was executed in 1945. She was pardoned posthumously in 2005.