The year is 1980. Leonard Grey, now in his sixth year at a prestigious Southern college, works various jobs to pay for the remaining class hours he needs to graduate. Hired by the athletic department to tutor a superb Black basketball recruit, Lenny becomes ensnared in conflicting conspiracies--one to use the player's skills for personal and institutional enrichment, the other to preserve the school's predominantly white athletic teams and tradition of academic excellence.

Discredited by the college, Lenny is hired as a full-time security guard, which entangles him in the details of a local girl's mysterious disappearance and the murkiness of local politics. This time, however, the young man has a chance to heal the wounds of his own past.