Cyrus Colter's third and most ambitious novel follows the fortunes of John Calvin Knight - the fiery, driven leader of the Black Peoples Congress, a man whose life and career have developed as much in reaction to his father and the views of an earlier generation as to the awakening civil rights movements of his own era. But no matter how far John Calvin tries to separate himself from his father, it is his father's wisdom about his family's history - and that of all African Americans - that first inflames and ultimately engrosses the son, determining his own life and its possible successes or failures.