Beginning with her great-great grandfather, Moses Calhoun, a house slave who used the rare advantage of his education to become a successful businessman in post-war Atlanta, Gail Lumet Buckley follows her family’s two branches: one that stayed in the South, and the other that settled in Brooklyn. Through the lens of her relatives’ momentous lives, Buckley examines major events throughout American history --- from Atlanta during Reconstruction and the rise of Jim Crow, to New York City during the Harlem Renaissance, and then from World War II to the Civil Rights Movement.