To Finnegan, Mindy seemed so unhappy that she simply had to confirm his idea that today's deprived young people are caged in their unfortunate lots in life by a cruel, newly hardened society. That her grim prospects might have resulted from her destructive way of dealing with her grief, rather than of larger social forces, seems not to have occurred to him. Finnegan's thesis in the opposite fashion, by succeeding against those odds Finnegan insists have become newly insurmountable. Terry, a young black man living in New Haven, works hard at a job folding boxes for a local restaurant. Terry and his business associates work six days a week, sometimes pulling all-nighters preparing their product.
Terry feels other, more serious pressures as well.
His high school is chaotic and sometimes dangerous. A bloody drive-by shooting occurs while Finnegan visits Terry's school. As a young black man, Terry is the object of police persecution. At one point, Finnegan follows him on a ridiculous journey through the criminal justice system for a crime he did not commit. Terry's worst pressure comes from his mother's drug addiction.