Written almost entirely in dialogue, this novel takes us into the lives of ellis dehart and his fair-skinned african-american wife, rosa, as they search for answers to two shattering tragedies: the death of their son from a rare disease, and the refusal by ellis's father to have anything to do with them. rosa, the rational geneticist, thinks she knows the cause of their son's death, but ellis, unable to accept the randomness of a chance mutation, turns to genealogy for the answer. through research and imagination, he recreates the lives of their ancestors and discovers a more likely explanation. ellis then tries to learn why the father he revered rejected him and rosa after their engagement. was it because of her race? was it because rosa's father was a civil-rights activist in the small southern town where ellis's father's was police chief? was ellis's father involved in the killing of rosa's parents? ellis's recreation of that tragic time cracks the case but uncovers a secret even more threatening to his marriage to rosa.