The Gold Piano tells the story of Emerson Wainwright, a young man whose idyllic life in a small North Carolina town is turned upside down after his father is caught on videotape in a homosexual act at the county hospital.

To escape from his hometown and its painful memories, Emerson enrolls at an under-funded historically black college a hundred miles away, attending on a minority grant. As the only white student living on campus, he struggles with his loneliness and his role as an outsider.

His relationship with his roommate, a black activist from Brooklyn, is challenged when Emerson begins to fall in love with Zena, a gifted black artist. The novel’s final scenes bring a quiet but hopeful sense of resolution to Emerson’s quest to define himself and find his place in the world.