The year is 2020, and not much has changed. Human beings are still killing each other over religion, and evidence of life on other planets, if exposed, would certainly rock some fundamentalist boats. So when Lucy Bergmann’s astrophysicist husband Thom tenderly hangs a computer memory stick storing irrefutable proof of extraterrestrial life around her neck, Lucy is both moved and nervous.

In Birmingham, Alabama, twenty-year-old Stella Silver, an idealistic white college student, is sent reeling off her measured path by events of 1963. Combining political activism with single parenting and night-school teaching, African American Christine Taylor discovers she must heal her own bruised heart to actualize meaningful social change.