Deceptive Calm starts with declared Martial Law in South Carolina. In 1968, two American legends are felled by assassins, Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy, In the South, it was a tough time to be Black. Against this backdrop, Vanessa, a light-skinned beauty is raised in a Catholic Orphanage for Blacks. After the death of the nun who reared her and a back-alley abortion, Vanessa changes her race and assumes the identity of a dead White Baby. Her charmed life abruptly ends with the birth of her first child who is diagnosed with Sickle Cell disease.