Tragic Magic by Wesley Brown

Meet Melvin Ellington, a.k.a. Mouth - a Black twenty-something, ex-college radical who has just been released from a five-year prison stretch having been a conscientious objector to the Vietnam War. It's his first day on the outside, back in New York. Hungry for freedom, desperate for female companionship and reunited with concerned parents, Mouth finds himself haunted by his past. Through a filmic series of flashbacks, we are exposed to Mouth's time in prison, his college days and, finally, his earliest high school days. Each street corner, subway ride and run-in with an old flame brings with it the echo of his previous life.