The Promise is an incredible true story of Alphonso Mayo, a young African American man born at the height of the crack epidemic in 1987 to a drug addict mother who abandoned him in a drug house when he was six months old. Rescued by his aunt and uncle, Alphonso spent the rest of his childhood in a home filled with drugs and violence. He saw his first murder at age five and lost his first friend to gun violence—a six-year-old girl—a year later. Within his home, he endured almost daily physical abuse and hunger and watched many family members waste away from drugs and alcohol.