Lawrence is an awkward, bookish man. He'd been a grad student with a notion to write his thesis about a connection between Nathaniel Hawthorne and Nathanael West. That was before a nervous breakdown interrupted his studies and left him homeless. He finds himself on Skid Row during Operation Clean Sweep, a citywide campaign to get rid of LA's homeless.
Lawrence is articulate, and sometimes lucid, but more often not. He is well-read, and sees current events through the historical lens of Puritan New England. He views the arrests by the LAPD as a recurrence of the Salem Witch trials. His main concerns are keeping track of his lucky quarter and a piece of blue string. But the police sweeps and the transience of homeless life silently conspire to separate Lawrence from what is even more important to him--his friends, Albert and Joey, and especially, Bekah.
Time Is the Longest Distance is a novel about disruption, loss and longing when you have almost nothing left to lose--but not quite nothing.