Foreword
Perry Turner, a black veteran from Vietnam comes back to New York to find things have changed. His mother has moved to a classier apartment, still safe in her black section, fearful of the whites as she always has been. His girlfriend of old with whom he thought everything was over awaits him with more than open arms.
Walking the streets on his first night back for a month's leave, he runs into Al, his old buddy from school. With Al is Vicky, a sweet white girl who catches Perry's eye at first sight. He knows that there are forces pulling them together from that instant, but the forces of society, prejudice, fear, hatred, and distrust pull them apart and hold them aloof more than they want to be.
Al, Perry discovers, is something of a name in the city. He runs a slick underground paper called the East Village Alternative, and his fame has gone past the boundaries of the Hudson and East Rivers. Al, always the man in front, the school hero, and the brainchild, is now the avant-garde left wing newspaperman whose views are widely read by his select following.
But the paper is not Al's only baby. He has a commune around the corner from where his offices are. Inside his section of the building are two main rooms, one all white, the other black lit with a strangely exotic green light that gives a sense of anonymity to all who gather there.
The white room is the room of people as they want to be, of conversation, learning, exchange of ideas, and meeting people. In the black room more personal exchanges take place between various members of the cult, and there is where Perry first learns of how strongly he is really attracted to Vicky.
Caught in the turmoil between his black friends who want him only in their society, and his feeling that he must be friends with all he-likes whether or not their colors are the same, he finds himself enmeshed in the plots of both sides who vie for the strong soul and the powerful personality of the man caught between his love for the old and his desire to advance ever into the exhilarating new.