It's 1969 in Oakland, California, but life is anything but groovy for 12-year-old Troy Hunter. The public school system has misdiagnosed him as learning disabled and his mother's bullying, morphine-addicted boyfriend, Leon, wont leave the couch in their cramped apartment in a Black Panther run housing project. Troy becomes increasingly lonely and afraid until the night Brother Nate shows up, four soldiers deep, and banishes Leon for good.A talented but reluctant local leader of the militant Panther Party, Brother Nate befriends Troy and is shocked to discover that Troy is actually a gifted child with a genius IQ. He vows to help Troy escape his hopeless situation and give him a chance at a better life. But with his conscientious objector status denied and the Vietnam War looming, time is running out for Brother Nate. Before fleeing to Canada, Brother Nate sends Troy three thousand miles east to attend the nation's most prestigious preparatory school, where Troy begins his climb from a life with no prospects to one with no limits.Although determined not to disappoint the man who saved him from his painful childhood, Troy grows disillusioned with success and guilt-stricken over those he left behind. He retreats into the lonely existence of an itinerant journalist, a road that leads him to an abandoned old mansion marooned in a crime-stricken suburb of the nation's capital. It is here that Troy comes face-to-face with his past and learns the terrible costs of his own good fortune.