Thirty-one-year-old Pittsburgh City Councilor Meg Cabot is the first openly lesbian elected official in the state of Pennsylvania. She’s less than a month into her first term when a vicious hate crime targeting the city’s Lesbian and Gay Community Center puts Meg in the middle of a media maelstrom. But this tragedy leads to possibility when Meg’s new national visibility catches the attention of Democratic Party leaders, who see in Meg a rising star.

With her hard-driving chief of staff steering her toward a once-in-a-lifetime professional opportunity, Meg decides how far she’ll go to advance her career and whether it’s possible to be both a successful politician and a good person.