Nineteen year old Winston "Tuffy" Foshay, 22 stone, new father to a baby boy and player-king in a motley crew in Spanish Harlem, is looking for a purpose in life. After narrowly escaping death - by fainting - in a drug deal gone sour, Tuff knows he needs to make some decisions, and soon, with or without the help of his tight-knit Harlem circle - his scheming, disabled best friend Fariq; his Beat-poet Black Panther father, Clifford; Inez, the Marxist revolutionary who raised him, and his bewildered mentor from the Big Brother programme, the hapless African-American rabbi, Spencer Jefferson.
So when Inez offers him $20,000 to run for city council, he gamely embarks on one of the most outrageous campaigns in political history, one that changes both his vision of the world and his place in it.
