Clifford Thompson was raised to believe in treating every person of every colour as an individual, and he decided as a young man that America, despite its history of racial oppression, was his home as much as anyone else''s. Thompson finds himself questioning his most deeply held convictions when the race-baiting Donald Trump ascends to the presidency - elected by whites, whom Thompson had refused to judge as a group, and who make up the majority in this country Thompson had called his own. In the grip of contradictory emotions, he turns for guidance to the wisdom of writers he admires while knowing that the answers to his questions about America ultimately lie in America itself.