October 1957. Ernest Omotoso, a brilliant young Nigerian scientist, arrives at a small New Hampshire motel with two missions: to track Sputnik’s first pass over American soil, and to propose to Madeline Bradford, the Alabama-born schoolteacher he has loved since childhood. What he doesn’t know is that Madeline has hidden their relationship from her family for years — and that her father is already on his way. Over the course of one cool autumn evening, five people gather on the motel’s back porch: a French-Canadian boy who wants to make music, his fierce and tender mother, two young people brave enough to love across every boundary their world has drawn, and a father who must decide what kind of man he actually is. The satellite doesn’t care about any of this. It shows up anyway.