A white man has been lynched two months before twenty-three-year-old Donald Gambell returns to his New Jersey hometown. As the first black member of the police force, Gambell learns the routines of his new work—the traffic stops and domestic quarrels, the bullying and bragging—from his partner Frank Butras, who refuses to discuss the murder that has left the town shaken. For Gambell, life near his father and sister is familiar in both its comforts and confusions, but his home has changed in ways he finds difficult to understand.