This story of love is told from the point of view of Roy, a young veteran who fought in the Vietnam War. Roy leaves the army in the middle to late 1980s. Unenthused to return home to the South, he moves to Detroit with his older brother Skipp. What Roy hopes will be an asylum from the horrors of Jim Crow’s South turns into a mixture of nightmares and pleasurable lust.

 

He finds gainful employment as a bartender and driver for a seemingly cunning businessman named Mickey. However, Mickey is more than what he seems, as he has ties to the mob and Detroit’s crime syndicates. 

 

Roy finds himself in a compromising position when a connection of lust and romance grows between him and the mobster’s girlfriend, Snow—an alluring, glamorous woman nearly impossible for any man to resist, even the young and stoic Roy.

 

Against his better judgment, he allows temptation to control his emotions, placing him in countless dangerous situations. The story explores the idea that what the heart wants, the heart will have, and leaves us with the question: would we rather experience true love for only a brief moment, or live a life without ever experiencing it at all?