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 to him away from home, and became addicted to anything that would shield him from himself; alcohol and sex to everything in between. But he can't forget the goodness of his family and the moral upbringing which follow him like sleepless ghosts. He is a bed-bound patient who is given drugs for pain every four hours. He rides these morphine-induced dreams on an inner search and discovery mission seeking to understand the road that leads to his hospital bed. His body immobilized, his dreams replay the episodes that lead him back through what has made him sick in the first place. Each time he awakes he is closer to the surface of a reality he must survive in. Gradually, his memories of the fears and failures begin to glow like infinite candles lighting the way back home. This is a love story.