A look at the life of Cecil Gaines who served eight presidents as the White House's head butler from 1952 to 1986, and had a unique front-row seat as political and racial history was made.

After twelve years in prison, Walter returns home. His family has abandoned him, save for his brother-in-law. Few know he's a sex offender and pedophile. Walter finds an apartment and is regularly visited by his parole officer. He gets a job at a lumber mill and starts seeing a coworker. Then his new world begins to unravel; as his past becomes known, he strikes up a high-risk friendship with a young girl and realizes that a man loitering near a schoolyard is a child molester prowling for his next victim.

A prison guard begins a tentative romance with the unsuspecting widow of a man whose execution he presided over.