Like the blues -- sweet, sad and full of truth --  this masterly work of fiction rocks us with  powerful emotions. In it are anger and pain, but above  all, love -- affirmative love of a woman for her  man, the sustaining love of a black family. Fonny, a  talented young artist, finds himself unjustly  arrested and locked in New York's infamous tombs. But  his girlfriend, Tish, is determined to free him,  and to have his baby, in this starkly realisitic  tale... a powerful endictment of American concepts of  justice and punishment in our time.