THE TIME BEING tells of a grown boy that was once considered as an unwilling 'witness' to the disappearance of three of his friends, and how he interacts with their surviving relatives when returning forty-plus unsolved years later. THE TIME BEING has mixed racial relationships taking place in long ago Baltimore, when the black parts of town were not yet in the white parts of town. THE TIME BEING travels from Civil War Maryland to recent Baltimore, while tripping THE WIRE with a dose of EDGAR ALLAN POE.