Everyone is thrilled and delighted when Nora White, at seventeen, successfully completes high school in 1922 Mississippi and is headed for college. Everyone but Nora. She dreams about Langston Hughes, Cotton Clubs, Fancy Dresses, and Harlem. She has daydreamed about The Black Mecca for years as she sat beneath Mr. Oak, the large oak tree on the beautiful green grass of her family's five acres. The ambitious, young Nora is fascinated by the prospect of being a famous writer in The Harlem Renaissance. Despite her parent's staunch protest, Nora finds herself in Jacobsville, New York, a small town forty-five minutes outside Harlem. Gideon and Molly White are horrified by the loss of their daughter and are tormented by nightmares of the violent South, including the horrible lynching of Gideon's sister years before. As the pair begins a terrifying and agonizing quest for Nora, they are plagued with visions of the deadly South, like the brutal lynching of Gideon's sister years ago. As the couple embarks on a frightening and gut-wrenching search for Nora, they are each stalked by their own traumatic past. Meanwhile, Nora learns that the North is not all it's cracked up to be.