14-year-old mixed-race Danny Foster, a free spirit in a Southern town crossed by two rail lines, is burdened by being on the wrong side of too many tracks. Not only is he, along with his single-parent mother, a prostitute to the town's men, but he also risks being swept up in election scandal from his relationship with both candidates. He's about to leave for a free ride to a military academy 25 miles away, but can he get out of town before he's swept off the rails by a sex scandal?
Meet Brad, a twenty-ish college graduate working in the advertising field. He is a small man with small hands, tiny feet, short stature, and a timid soul. Blessed or cursed with a soft, elegant face more suited to a woman than a man, Brad has deep-seated fears—some he is aware of, while others he does not even know exist—not yet, that is. Then there are the desires—he doesn’t know about those either or perhaps, more to the point, won’t own up to them.
Fourteen-year-old Stephan swims like a fish and looks like a Michelangelo statue as he plays in the sea off the Lido di Venezia beach in Venice in 1924. As he stretches and dries off on the sand, he is ogled by expatriate American banker Jeremy Biddle, German doctor Reinhard Gleason, English patrician Sir Clarence Hailley, and French priest Father Franz. Each of the men aches in want for the boy and each of them has him--but at a price.