When Smoky O'Donnell, a small-town girl with big-city ambitions, arrives in Atlanta in the spring of 1966, both she and the city find themselves on the brink of cataclysmic and irrevocable change. Invited to be a new writer for the burgeoning Downtown magazine by its eccentric and revolutionary editor, Matt Comfort, Smoky finds herself thrown into a social and political whirlwind that is a world apart from her conservative, sheltered family in Savannah. Embracing the city, and the nascent Civil Rights Movement that is enveloping it, Smoky rises from caption writer to fearless chronicler of the Civil Rights Movement as it sweeps through Atlanta, forever transforming first the once sleepy city, and then the nation. In this tumultuous time of conflicting passions, Smoky also finds herself torn between three young men: Brad Hunt, the wealthy young scion of "old Atlanta," who loves Smoky but fears her passion for her career; Luke Geary, a rakish photojournalist who becomes her sparring partner both at the magazine and in bed; and John Howard, the young civil rights activist who works as a right-hand man to Martin Luther King Jr. Set amidst the swirling melee of the late '60's, Downtown celebrates and illuminates the extraordinary journey of Smoky O'Donnell from a sheltered girl to an irrepressible woman, writer, activist, and lover.