Andy is a burned out, white State Department official in a communist 1950's United States and as he tells his friend Herb in letters, he hates his new job. He must stay at the Colored People's Reservation, or CPR, for three years, and he cannot leave. He has a friend, O'Doone, but not much else. He eventually finds out that his public relations job entails censoring the letters that the CPR's staff and residents send and receive. As Andy tells Herb, he only has his salary and his mission -- to support the development of the CPR as a thriving, separate civilization for all Black Americans. Meeting and marrying Ruth, his whip-smart, kind secretary, perks him up considerably. Andy's descriptions of his work to Herb, however, begin to reveal the darkness behind the enterprise: Black people are being relocated against their will. The government silences dissent and discourse within the CPR and without. The nation's media is compromised. Andy himself makes a stringent, economic, anti-capitalist argument in favor of the resettlement. O'Doone, however, begins to bring him unsettling information, which Andy begins including in his letters with invisible ink: None of the 50,000 internees have requested letters from the outside, and the CPR will not have enough resources to accommodate all 14 million Black Americans. O'Doone jokes that the US cares more about the CPR doing business with China, since the CPR has been exporting tonnes of meat and leather goods to China. O'Doone wonders how this is possible when there are no cattle in the CPR. Then, he realizes a gruesome truth. Andy uses Ruth's pregnancy and his work to distract himself, outwardly committing to the fantasy. O'Doone simply kills himself. Needless to say, Andy goes vegetarian. He cannot bring himself to tell Ruth the truth, but he wonders: why was it so easy for him to find out? Does the government want people to know?