Noni Reid has grown up in the shadow of her mother, Dr. Radiance Castine, renowned scholar of Black literature, who is alarmingly perfect at just about everything. When Dr. Castine takes a job as the president of the prestigious Stonepost College in rural Virginia, Noni is forced to leave her New England home and, most importantly, a prime internship and her friends. She and her mother move into the "big house" on Tangleroot Plantation. Tangleroot was built by one of Noni's ancestors, an enslaved man named Cuffee Fortune--who Dr. Castine believes was also the original founder of Stonepost College, and that the school was originally formed for Black students. Dr. Castine spends much of her time trying to piece together enough undeniable truth in order to change the name of the school in Cuffee's honor--and to force the university to reckon with its own racist past. Meanwhile, Noni hates everything about her new home, but finds herself morbidly fascinated by the white, slaveholding family who once lived in it. Slowly, she begins to unpeel the layers of sinister history that envelop her Virginia town, her mother's workplace, her ancestry--and her life story as she knew it. Through it all, she must navigate the ancient prejudices of the citizens in her small town, and ultimately, she finds herself both affirming her mother's position and her own--but also discovering a secret that changes everything.