The novel tells the life story of a group of friends, from preaching in Harlem, through to experiencing "incest, war, poverty, the civil-rights struggle, as well as wealth and love and fame—in Korea, Africa, Birmingham, New York City, Paris.

"[1] The novel enmeshes racism with homophobia, with an "explicit association of Birmingham and Sodom".

[2][3] It has been suggested that the novel links the trope of the internalisation of history to what W. E. B.

Du Bois defined as the African American's "longing to attain self-conscious manhood".

[4] It has been suggested that Crunch subscribes to the idea propounded by Auguste Ambroise Tardieu and Cesare Lombroso that homosexuality was inscribed upon a homosexual's flesh,[5] when he wonders, "if his change was visible".