Percy, an African-American Vietnam veteran, is a photographer, who becomes romantically involved with Sarah, a mature, passionate woman living in the Bay Area.

Sarah's loopy housemate Maya, creates havoc with Sarah and Percy and eventually becomes instrumental in Percy having post-traumatic-stress flashbacks from his days in the military while serving in Vietnam. The central themes of this novel concern children's suffering and pictures, not only the pictures shot by Percy of dying children in India and the funeral rites in Varanasi by the sacred Ganges River, but the pictures projected by each of us in our need to be seen.