Handsome, charismatic Hawkins "Hawk" Fuller has a financially rewarding career behind the scenes in politics. Hawkins avoids emotional entanglements - until he meets Tim Laughlin, a young man brimming with idealism and religious faith. They begin a romance just as Joseph McCarthy and Roy Cohn declare war on "subversives and sexual deviants," ushering in one of the darkest periods in 20th century American history. Over the course of four decades, Hawk and Tim intersect with the Vietnam War protests of the 1960s, the drug-fueled disco-hedonism of the 1970s, and the AIDS crisis of the 1980s, all while facing obstacles in the world and on itself.