1950s Philadelphia: Fifteen-year-old Ruby Pearsall is on track to becoming the first in her family to attend college, in spite of having a mother more interested in keeping a man than raising her only daughter. But falling madly in love with the one boy she is forbidden from threatens to pull her back down into the poverty and desperation that has been passed on to her like a birthright. When she is imprisoned in a home for unwed mothers, locked up with other 'fallen girls', everything she has worked so hard for is about to slip through her fingers.

 

Eleanor Quarles arrives in Washington, DC with ambition, drive, and a past she is trying her hardest to run away from. When she meets the handsome William Pride at Howard University, it's love at first sight. But William hails from one of DC's elite wealthy Black families, and his parents don't let just anyone into their inner circle - especially not a girl from 'the wrong side of the tracks'. Eleanor hopes that a baby will help them finally accept her. But fate has other plans in store for her...

 

With their stories colliding in the most unexpected and heartbreaking of ways, Ruby and Eleanor are forced to make the toughest decisions of their lives - choices that will either save them... or be their undoing.