When race and ethnicity mean nothing to a man and woman in love-but everything to their families-everyone gets hurt.

In 1995, when Tyler Carson and Alana Adler meet, their chemistry is instant. He's a psychology professor. She's a linguist and musician. Both are 38. He is White. She is Black. Neither has made much time for serious relationships, until a train trip changes their trajectory.

But their growing passion, played out in atmospheric settings from Cape Cod to San Francisco and Montana to New York, is no match for the intergenerational forces working to tear them apart. In addition to Tyler's doting, manipulative mother and his long-lost father who reappears with a new identity, deeply buried secrets in Alana's family begin to emerge.

Ultimately, the unwanted significance of race, ethnicity, and a past they had nothing to do with test the limits of their love, creating unexpected futures for both.