Elgar Enders "escapes" his parents' house when he is twenty-nine years old. The purchase of a property in a black ghetto in the Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn constitutes this form of escapist behavior. His initial plan is to renovate the building into upscale apartments and get rid of the black residents who are already living there. But Elgar is not the type of person to be constrained by the impulses of the day before, and it doesn't take him long to start thinking about other things.