One afternoon, not long after Kelly Thorndike has moved back to his hometown of Baltimore, an African American man he doesn´t recognize calls out to him. To Kelly´s shock, the man identifies himself as Martin, who was one of Kelly´s closest friends in high school--and, before his disappearance nearly twenty years before, skinny, white, and Jewish. Martin then tells an astonishing story: After years of immersing himself in black culture, he´s had a plastic surgeon perform "racial reassignment surgery"--altering his hair, skin, and physiognomy to allow him to pass as African American. Unknown to his family or childhood friends, Martin has been living a new life ever since. Now, however, Martin feels he can no longer keep his new identity a secret; he wants Kelly to help him ignite a controversy that will help sell racial reassignment surgery to the world. Kelly, still recovering from the death of his wife and child and looking for a way to begin anew, agrees, and things quickly begin to spiral out of control...