Twenty-one-year-old Joshua Banks, second son of a Yorkshire baron, is chasing a future that is slipping away. He must succeed soon; once his brother takes over the estate, Joshua will be cut off for good.

On the eve of his engagement to Margaret, daughter of a powerful press baron, Margaret's father offers a Faustian bargain. A foreign correspondent position, but he must sail to New York immediately.

Instead of fame, a vengeful editor forces Joshua to cover low-life minstrel shows. Joshua confronts an alien world of Jim Crow, race passing, seances, dollar princesses, gold cures, muscular Christianity, sex parlors, Native Americans, gay theatre, and all manner of Gilded Age excess. Joshua struggles to make sense of the life and murder trial of his friend, the first black recording star, George Washington Johnson.

Challenged by the charismatic Black anti-lynching activist Eva Hope Moon, he rallies to her cause while trying to resist his attraction to her. Meanwhile, Margaret resents Joshua's absence and restrictions on her desire to attend college.

Just as Joshua is finding his feet, an informer tips Nowak on the Banks' family secret, a scandal that threatens to destroy Joshua's very identity. Joshua must either remake himself or lose everything.