The unnamed narrator, a U. S. Air Force "casualty" (there has been no war) returns from "The Republic of Free China" in a hospital plane. When he left home he was confused about his worth, his identity, his sexual understandings, his race, and his spiritual acceptance. And although he was "religious" that state provided him with very few answers. He was "good, holy, clean, moral, honest, and miserable as all hell " as his search for love in a whirlpool of fear continually reminded him. As he often saw life from the limbs of a "Chinaberry tree," he was unprepared for the world that opened up...