Mislaid

Stillwater College in Virginia 1966. Freshman Peggy an ingâenue with literary pretensions falls under the spell of Lee a blue-blooded poet and professor and they begin an ill-advised affair that results in an unplanned pregnancy and marriage. The two are mismatched from the start--she's a lesbian he's gay--but it takes a decade of emotional erosion before Peggy runs off with their three-year-old daughter leaving their nine-year-old son behind. Worried that Lee will have her committed for her erratic behavior Peggy goes underground adopting an African American persona for her and her daughter. They squat in a house in an African-American settlement eventually moving to a housing project where no one questions their true racial identities. As Peggy and Lee's children grow up they must contend with diverse emotional issues: Byrdie deals with his father's compulsive honesty; while Karen struggles with her mother's lies--she knows neither her real age nor that she is white nor that she has any other family. Years later a minority scholarship lands Karen at the University of Virginia where Byrdie is in his senior year. Eventually the long lost siblings will meet setting off a series of misunderstandings and culminating in a comedic finale worthy of Shakespeare--