Nathan McCall was raised in a working-class black section of Portsmouth, Virginia in the 1960s and 1970s. Racial tensions, the growing culture of the streets, and an ignorance to life’s realities influenced McCall to pursue crime. He was arrested and sentenced to twelve years in prison. While in prison, he began educating and improving himself. When he left prison, he earned a college degree in journalism and entered the white man’s system, where he confronted racism and the bondage of his past with intelligence, perseverance, and integrity.

Bampoose was McCall’s grandmother. She was the rock that held his family together. She worked as a domestic for affluent white families. McCall states that all she did for her entire life was work and suffer. 

Lenora Alvin was McCall’s mother. She remarried and raised McCall and his siblings with his stepfather. She was loving and caring. She didn’t give up on any of her children, regardless of how bad their troubles were, and worked to guide them in the right direction. She wasn’t outwardly affectionate and didn’t discuss important life matters with her children. Consequently, they matured ignorant to many of life’s realities, and suffered the consequences.