It is captioned “This blending of the two races (Caucasian and African) by amalgamation is just what is needed for the perfection of both.”[8] Liberty Fish is the son of two passionate abolitionists but whose grandparents were cruel slave-owners.

The plot follows him from his birth to young adulthood, his enlistment in the Union army, and his quest to find his grandparents who he blames for the despair his mother feels.

The Los Angeles Times gave the novel a positive review; critic Mark Rozzo noted: “The effect here is of Wright’s harnessing the supersaturated prose of the period—the stuff that Edmund Wilson once derisively called 'coagulated'—to a modern, post-Vietnam sensibility accustomed to flying body parts….

In these battle scenes, we feel as if we’ve stumbled across the infernal manuscripts of a long-lost literary talent, as if the scary ellipses of The Red Badge of Courage were being filled in by a chronicler as ravenous for bodily data—in this case, Minie balls thunking into men, frothing chest wounds—as Whitman.”[9] The New York Times compared the story to the obvious Heart of Darkness, but also said, "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is a better bet (on the plot).

Most of the people Liberty meets (and not just in the South) are what the Cheshire Cat would call 'mad,' from a shaggy hermit to the Georgia farmer who secedes from the Confederacy by reclaiming his little plot of land in the name of the Union."