Two twentysomething New Yorkers. Seth is awkward and shy. Carter is the glamorous heir to one of America's great fortunes. They have one thing in common: a passion for music. Seth is desperate to hold on to the future. Carter is slipping back into the past. After Seth accidentally records an unknown singer in a park, Carter sends it out over the internet claiming it's a long-lost 1920s blues recording by a musician called Charlie Shaw. When an old record collector contacts them to say that their fake record and their fake blues musician are actually real, the two young white men, accompanied by Carter's troubled sister Leonie, spiral down into the heart of the nation's darkness, encountering a suppressed history of greed, envy, revenge, and exploitation.