Nathan James Morris is a talented, ambitious black kid from P.G. County, Maryland. He wants to be an illustrator. But at 19, he has been expelled from Freedom College for alleged misconduct. He has few friends, aside from the parasitic Guy Sellers; and save for his scholarship's chump change, even fewer dollars. Hurt, angry, and in desperate need of cash, he joins the Marines. But he soon discovers that his chosen road has been paved with whimsical officers, endless bomb attacks, disease, an unbelievable desolation. After the military, things get even rockier....an unhappy reuniting with family, friends and fiancee....a kidnaping in Turkey ....violent confrontations with neo-Nazis and racist North Africans....his studies and miseries at C.S.U., America{u2019}s most prestigious black university, and his final days in a DC slum, as witness to (and participant in) the wild destruction of his older brother{u2019}s marriage, with a little help from the one 2friend3 who never seems to leave him be : Guy Sellers.