Raised by an outspoken single mother, Mac coaches women's high school basketball in a New Orleans public school. When Mac encourages a star athlete, Barbara Jeanne Bordelon, to play on the boy's basketball team, he incurs a flurry of public scrutiny that puts him in the path of radical feminists and evangelical Christians. Set in the 1970s to coincide with the Title IX ruling, Courting Pandemonium looks back on the landmark equal rights case with the singular mix of poignancy and absurdist humor Barton is known for.