Elgin, Ohio

Percy Mabry is the only Black resident of a dying Ohio town—and he's about to become the most expensive man in America. When Elgin, population 4,212, discovers that landing a two-billion-dollar factory hinges on a diversity score only Percy can provide, the mayor comes asking for his smile, his handshake, and his story. Percy agrees. Then he slides an invoice for $250,000 across the counter. What follows is a reckoning sixty years in the making—with a town that always loved having Percy around as proof of its own goodness, but never once asked what it cost him to stay.