One afternoon, not long after Kelly Thorndike has moved back to his hometown of Baltimore, an African American man he doesn't recognize calls out to him. To Kelly's shock, the man identifies himself as Martin, who was one of Kelly's closest friends in high school - and, before his disappearance nearly twenty years before, skinny, white, and Jewish. Martin then tells an astonishing story: he's had a plastic surgeon perform 'racial reassignment surgery.' Now, however, Martin feels he can no longer keep his new identity a secret; he wants Kelly to help him ignite a controversy that will help sell racial reassignment surgery to the world. Kelly, still recovering from the death of his wife and child, agrees, and things quickly begin to spiral out of control.