This prequel portrays the coming-of-age of a modern-day young African American woman who almost always gets into trouble. Called "PJ," "Missy," and "Miss Prissy" by family and close friends, she is self-centered, spoiled, and sheltered, and she hardly ever sees herself how others see her. Set in the early 1980s, Priscilla J. "PJ" Austin is close to her father, a Methodist minister and consummate politician. He has raised her to think like a man and go after her heart's desire for the life he could never have. Shortly after she begins her career as an assistant professor of political science at Florida A&M University in Tallahassee, her father mysteriously asks her to relocate closer to home (Prendergast, New York). She contacts an Ohio state senator for whom she performed an internship during her graduate studies at Ohio State University and with whom she had an affair. The senator offers her a job as his legislative aide. She accepts. The story takes off from there. The series' prequel takes a deep look at the forces which made Priscilla what she is: her family roots in highly-segregated Mississippi, her upbringing in upstate New York where subtle racism leaves its scars despite her loving father's protection, a campus date rape that leaves her with unhealed wounds and, a scintillating season as a high-powered legislative aide in the Ohio Senate landing her into a life-altering political scandal.