Camilla Valentine is a black, twenty-four year old farm girl whose striking beauty stuns Hawk Delano Thompson at first sight at the colored rodeo in Oklahoma. Their brief social engagement leads to Hawk corresponding with Camilla via a series of back and forth letters. Those letters reveal Camilla's childhood dream to become a black actress in the year 1949—stage and film. Hawk could help her with that: fulfill her dream. Hawk, at twenty-seven, is a successful entrepreneur with big ideas living in Crown City (fictional) in California near Hollywood movie studios. Crown City is a black governed city filled with modern ideas and talented, prideful people. Hawk, who's no longer smitten by Camilla but who has fallen in love with her, invites Camilla to come to Crown City to study acting at the locally prestigious Desmond Booker's Acting School. Camilla agrees. She will stay in the Lion Hotel in the Crown. But more important than any other arrangement between them, Hawk confesses to Camilla that he's in love with her, and makes it perfectly clear that he expects her to fall in love with him in due time; not any other man in Crown City.
