It's 2008, and the inauguration of President Barack Obama ushers in a new kind of hope. Ruth Tuttle, an Ivy-League educated Black engineer, is married to a kind and successful man who is eager to start a family, but Ruth is uncertain. She knows that to move forward she must make peace with the past. Returning home to her Indiana factory hometown, she finds it plagued by racism, unemployment, and despair. Just as she is about to uncover a burning secret her family wants to keep hidden, a traumatic incident strains the town's already searing racial tensions, sending Ruth on a collision course.