Lost Boundaries

In 1922, Scott Mason Carter graduates from Chase Medical School in Chicago and marries Marcia. Both are African American but light-skinned enough to be mistaken for whites. He has landed an internship, but his fellow graduate, the dark-skinned Jesse Pridham, fears he will have to work as a Pullman porter until a black hospital opens.

The couple travels to Georgia where the hospital director tells the board to favor Southern applicants and rescinds the offer when he sees Scott. The incident exposes how racial discrimination blocks opportunities for Black doctors in the South. Scott's medical career there ends before it can begin.

Back in Boston with Marcia's passing-white parents, the couple faces pressure to mimic white society. They choose to keep applying as a Negro, but are repeatedly rejected. The strain highlights how color lines shape their lives in the North as well.

Scott resigns from a shoe-making job and masquerades as white to undertake a one-year internship in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. The deception underscores the barriers to honest medical opportunities and the risks of being Black in a white-dominated system. He hopes to prove himself despite his race.

During an urgent call at an isolated lighthouse, Scott performs life-saving surgery on a sport fisherman who bleeds to death. The patient turns out to be Dr. Walter Bracket, a local clinic director who is impressed enough to offer Scott a position as town doctor in Keenham. Scott declines at first, explaining his race, but Bracket urges him to take the job without revealing it, and he reluctantly agrees while his wife is pregnant.

Scott accepts the position and becomes the town doctor in Keenham, New Hampshire. The Carters are relieved when their newborn son appears as white as they are, easing some of the family’s fears about their safety. He earns trust slowly among Keenham's residents who are curious but hopeful about this new Black doctor.

By 1942, as the United States enters World War II, the Carters are pillars of their small town. Howard attends the University of New Hampshire, while Shelly is in high school. Scott travels to Boston once a week to work at the Charles Howard Clinic, which Bracket and Pridham established for patients of all races.

The Carters keep their interracial reality secret from their children. When Howard brings home a black classmate, Arthur Cooper, Shelly worries about what her friends will think about a guest from a different race staying with them. Scott sternly forbids using racial slurs and emphasizes respect for others.

Howard and Scott enlist in the United States Navy, but a background check revokes Scott's commission as a lieutenant commander for failure to meet physical conditions. The only available position for Black personnel is as a steward, forcing the Carters to tell their children the truth about their identity. Howard ends his relationship with his white girlfriend.

Howard moves to Harlem, rents a room, and roams the streets to learn what it is like to be a Negro. He intervenes in a confrontation between two Black men, a gun goes off and he is taken into custody. A sympathetic Black police lieutenant helps him explain his experience, and Arthur Cooper helps collect him from the police station.

Howard and Scott return to Keenham after the Harlem episode. They attend a Sunday church service where the minister preaches a sermon of tolerance and notes that the Navy has ended its racist policy. The narrator confirms that Scott Carter remains the town doctor in Keenham.

The Carters continue serving their community, the truth about their race acknowledged, and Scott remains Keenham's doctor amid ongoing prejudice. The story closes on a note of resilience and gradual progress toward equality.