At its core, this is a book about friendship, as demonstrated by the relationship between Denver Moore and Ron Hall. The concept of friendship is examined through several different questions: What is friendship? Is it possible for people who live in drastically-different worlds to be friends? What responsibilities are entailed when two people are friends?

Early in the book, despite society’s systemic racism, Moore and Hall are both presented as people who have the capacity to relate to others who aredifferent from them. As a child, Moore befriends the white nephew of the plantation owner his family works for. As time goes by, and after he’s attacked by the three white youths on horseback, he gradually becomes more alienated and distant from society. He has friends of a sort while homeless, but this is based more on the necessity of having a partner to eke out a living with on the streets in the city. 

For his part, Hall is respectful of the black farmhands his grandfather employs and they become friends over the years, and eventually he goes to a roadhouse with them to drink his first beer and listen to raucous blues music.