This is the story of a young man coming of age in the early 1970's, after high school. Carl learns about women and love, joins the Marine Corps, and learns about being an adult; this is a long story with several books covering many decades. Lots of sex in the first couple of books, and is autobiographical in nature.
Arizona, 1944. Elinor Powell, a Black Army nurse, is assigned to care for Nazi prisoners—a job deemed too good for her to do for white American soldiers. Frederick Albert, a German POW and jazz-loving artist, sees her across the mess hall and declares, "I'm the man who's going to marry you." Against military law, Jim Crow racism, and two nations at war, they fall in love. Their forbidden romance would cost them everything—and prove that love can survive even the cruelest divides.
This actually happened in the Spring of 1963. My wife and I had gotten married two days before Christmas in ’62 and then early the following Spring had moved from what had been my apartment in the city into her mother’s small two bedroom Finger Lake cottage, in order to save money. The cottage was where my wife had lived and grown up but, until she and I moved in, it had sat empty.