Those Close Beside Me

The country is divided.

The president is reviled by some, adored by others. Protesters and minorities march in the streets to demand their rights to be heard. The government increases its crackdown on the opposition. The nation wavers on the brink of disaster.

But it’s not 2018.

It’s 1968, and, for Jason, a young man with a secret, the nation’s internal strife mirrors his own struggle to find himself. A Midwesterner, Jason  leaves his suburban home to attend Vanderbilt Divinity School. There, in Nashville, Tennessee, he meets a man who challenges his view of America, and offers him the assistant director position at a folk school, deep in the Appalachian Mountains. It’s among the families that live in the Cumberland Mountains where Jason discovers a truth about himself that changes his life forever.