Mauri Bale and her brother Stan are biracial, born and raised in Queens. Mauri has started an accounting career and Stan is still in college. After their father's death they travel to Georgia, where they meet their relative Bathsheba, and Zekial, a very powerful dreamer. Zekial, a slave in antebellum Georgia, has 'dreamed' himself and Bathsheba from 1859 into the 1990s.