Charlie Tucker is a Black man new in town, and in Jim Crow Raleigh, his job prospects are not great. After Stuart, a shopkeeper, turns him away because he worries about scaring off his white customers, a man named Sanders Grimsley recommends him to Aubert Delacroix, the new priest. From that day forward, Charlie is the sexton at St. Mary's. Delacroix is a young man and a very hard worker, but his diligent piety belies a darker secret. Alma Stuart, the shopkeeper's seventeen-year-old daughter and a sometime divinity student, is the key to that drama. One day, she comes home from the seminary for good, and before long, she has become a regular at the church, soon moving up from janitorial duties to playing the organ. She becomes agitated during rehearsal; She is staring at Delacroix, and he is staring at her. A week later, Charlie is cleaning up after a service when he sees them run into one another, and their awkwardness is enough to tell him that something has happened between them. As the affair continues that summer, Delacroix's health suffers and Alma becomes increasingly agitated. Not until they are particularly careless after a house party in Alma's honor does Stuart find out, at which point Delacroix finds himself arrested for statutory rape. The ensuing trial shakes the town to its core. Grimsley defends Delacroix, and Charlie's testimony about seeing them together is a strong point against them. Even so, Delacroix's reluctant denial of the charges is enough to acquit him.