Petronia Slater’s life has been plotted out for her since birth, just like every other child of successful Black builder and landowner Alonzo Slater. But Petronia feels stifled by the carefully curated world she inhabits as the daughter of a wealthy businessman in turn-of-the-century Milledgeville, Georgia.

When curiosity about her mother’s mysterious past gets the better of her, she sneaks out of her college dormitory to visit a disreputable neighborhood on the other side of Atlanta. There, she meets the young doctor Ben Simmons and dreams of running away for good. But history–and her family’s ghost–have other ideas.