Promise of the North is the fictitious tale of Corinna and Oscar Jackson, a young, deeply-loving, black couple committed to escaping the human indignities of life in the violent slum neighborhoods of early-sixties Washington, D.C. after Corinna is gang-raped. Oscar returns from a three-month stint in the Army to find his wife shocked and disgraced, afraid to confide her torment, and unable to face the streets that she and he have called home. She recovers long enough to tell of the terrifying events and her plan to move from the disturbing intensity of the ghetto to a presumably peaceful, northern location, drawn by the promise of integration.

Apprehensive after a tour of duty at Fort Devens in Massachusetts, Oscar nevertheless succumbs to Corinna’s emotional trauma and supports the plan to settle in virtually all-white Maine. Her hope for a warm welcome is effectively dashed by stigmatizing residents and myopic employers who alienate and ostracize the couple on the basis of skin-color and in flagrant disregard of their attractiveness, ambition, work credentials, and past military service. Corinna lashes out when all odds are against them in a fervent call to judgment that the promise of the North must not be forsaken.