Six year old Angeline's career as a gospel singer begins in a 1950's coal mining town in Alabama, ending in an out-of-wedlock pregnancy. The college freshman drops out of school, changes her name from Lily Angeline to Crystal Angel and seeks anonymity in New Orleans as a cabaret singer where she gives up her baby for adoption. After two years enduring the fragile bistro circuit, Angel returns to racially-torn Birmingham to face the ghosts that haunt her. She falls in love and is soon engaged to marry Chad, a church choir director landing her in the midst of the church's struggle with integration of the races. But Angel must face her own struggle--does she have the courage to confront the man she allowed to drive her away two years ago?