Having finished his first year of college, Felix Fist sets off to complete his year of wandering:

Leaving a dreary room in a derelict building on Anaheim in Long Beach on the border of the ghetto, Felix hitches rides to Oregon, works for the first and only time helping harvest grain, then takes to the road again traveling back to his place of origins where he encounters friends he thought he knew.

His trip back through purple mountains, painted desert, and grasslands followed by a layover with a weird woman whose mystic manner and insatiable libido prompt him to stay, he experiences a long night walk to a small Midwest town and a troubling assault he accepts with a tinge of perverse pleasure.

Finally arrived at his grandmother's on Milwaukee's Southside, Felix hears of family "misunderstandings" as well as news of people whom he had known before he left:

Meeting with a former high school friend whom he had admired, he reunites with a woman he had met in high school whom he had considered his first love now married with children. After reconnecting with Fat Jack, the urban cowboy, Felix considers a former lover, he reunites with a married woman with whom he had a courtly "affair" that unrequited had prompted him to leave when offered the chance to attend college in California. Then at a dinner with estranged family celebrating his return at which he tries to resolve family "misunderstandings, " he reconsiders why he thought he had returned safely home.