On Auburn Avenue, downtown Atlanta, a person can get just about anything life has to offer. You can buy groceries, get your teeth fixed or cop a vial of crack cocaine; you can get a seven-dollar haircut, a good game of nine-ball and a partner for the night, all on the same block. But things are changing, for white people are moving into the historically black neighbourhood, threatening to price-out the local residents, and Barlowe Reed, a single, forty-something African American, is not happy at all.
When Sean and Sandy Gilmore, a young white couple move in next door to his ramshackle rented home, Barlowe and Sandy develop a reluctant friendship as they hold frustrating conversations over the backyard fence. But fear and suspicion build all around them as more and more white people move in, changing the face of the neighbourhood. House by house, street by street, battle lines are drawn; it's only a matter of time before someone gets really hurt.