1903. It begins the day they take Lily’s body from Azalea’s arms. For weeks, she remains inside, suspended in her unbreachable grief. Then, without warning, Azalea is seized by the police and committed to a remote asylum, as her twelve-year-old son, Corbin, watches helplessly from the doorway. Determined to bring her home, Corbin slips away under cover of night to the asylum. But his plan falters, and he is captured and sent to the boys’ reformatory.

Azalea is watched by Superintendent Billingsly who claims he wants to cure her, but is really infatuated with her. Corbin is recognized by the Superintendent Hammersmith who is desperately trying to hide a secret about his past. Twisted in these power struggles, Azalea and Corbin begin to change, turning into the mad woman and juvenile delinquent society presumes them to be. Too much longer apart and the benevolent institutions determined to “save” them will swallow them up. With time running out, all four characters determine to get what they want regardless of who they must hurt.

Told in four interwoven perspectives, Queen Azalea is a quiet reckoning with grief, identity, and the slow, insidious violence of systems that insist they know what’s best.