Coleman Silk is a worldly and admired professor who loses his job after unwittingly making a racial slur. To clear his name Silk writes a book about the events with his friend and colleague Nathan Zuckerman who in the process discovers a dark secret Silk has hidden his whole life. All the while Silk engages in an affair with Faunia Farley a younger woman whose tormented past threatens to unravel the layers of deception Silk has constructed.