His Forbidden Love

It is 1972 and Ceja, a seven-year-old boy, lives with his grandmother in an isolated area of New York: no television, no peers, no grandfather, who has left with his lover. At night, when his grandmother dreams and her gray hair spreads across the pillow like seaweed, Ceja sits and listens to her breathing, afraid it may stop before they come to take him.

Who will come to take him? He waits for his parents – two radical communists followed by the FBI – whom he has not seen since he was a baby. Ceja truly wants this departure and hopes they will take him while his grandmother is still alive.

Then one day the elevator door opens and he sees a woman whom he was supposed to call Diala, rather than Mama. Diala was to look after Cheney during a one-on-one meeting, but things do not go as planned, and Diala and Cheney end up fugitives in the Australian bush, in an unwelcoming hippie commune.

Carey uses stream-of-consciousness style to describe Ceja's confusion about himself and about life.