Diane Howard holds a strange secret that not even she understands. As the great-great granddaughter of abolitionist general Oliver Otis Howard, the contemporary student believes it is her calling to address the unresolved issues of Jim Crow left over from her ancestor's time. Though African American progress has been in hibernation for a century she witnesses its resurgence in her time. But even more intriguing, whenever her father tells stories of the Civil War, she feels a blinding, sometimes painful sense of Déjà vu. Like she was not only tethered to that age of black carriages and hoop skirts. but played an integral role! Days after president Kennedy's death, Diane meets Cleveland high school student Erich Metzger as the result of a car accident. Their quirky not exactly traditional boy meets girl moment establishes a life affirming counterpoint to the tragedy that has gripped the nation. Drawn into the 1960s like matter to a black hole, a road map has been drawn for the most incredible adventure of their lives.

Yet as her boyfriend is stubbornly skeptical of her belief in a past life. He realizes that as his coming of age grows out of the golden era of rock n' roll her transformation seems to have begun much earlier, exactly one century earlier.