The Infinite Plan

The novel follows the life of Gregory Reeves from early childhood through middle age, tracing his journey through poverty, war, professional ambition, and personal crisis across the second half of the 20th century. It opens with an epigraph in Gregory's voice describing a recurring nightmare: He stands alone on a mountaintop at dawn, surrounded by fallen comrades, firing at transparent enemy shadows his bullets cannot stop.

Gregory's father, Charles Reeves, is a self-styled doctor in divine sciences who travels the American West in the 1940s with his family in a painted truck, preaching an invented spiritual doctrine called The Infinite Plan. The doctrine posits a Supreme Intelligence governing the universe through intermediary beings. The family includes Charles's wife, Nora, a quiet Russian Jewish immigrant; their children, Judy and Gregory; and Olga, a fortune-teller and healer who joined the family through her friendship with Nora. Near the end of World War II, a soldier named King Benedict hitches a ride with the family, and Olga tells him he will live twice, a prediction that gains significance decades later.

When Charles falls gravely ill, the family settles on the eastern edge of Los Angeles. They take shelter with Pedro Morales, a generous former disciple, and his wife, Inmaculada. Pedro has risen from migrant farm labor to owning an automobile repair shop in the local Mexican barrio and becoming its most respected figure. After Charles undergoes surgery, the family sells the truck and buys a cottage on the barrio's edge. Gregory, the only blond, blue-eyed child in the neighborhood, is regularly beaten by gangs, particularly by a boy named Martínez. His closest bond forms with Carmen Morales, Pedro and Inmaculada's youngest daughter, who becomes his inseparable companion. He effectively joins the Morales household, with Inmaculada as a surrogate mother.

During Charles's final illness, Judy violently refuses to let Gregory sleep beside her as he always has. Gregory senses a secret in the house but does not investigate; the reason surfaces years later when Judy confesses that their father sexually abused her throughout childhood. Charles deteriorates into derangement and dies from internal hemorrhaging. Nora withdraws into a persistent haze, communicating with her dead husband's ghost. Gregory turns to the streets at seven, shining shoes and stealing. His mother tries to give him away, first to an orphanage and then to a farming couple, but both attempts fail.

At 16, Gregory is raped by Martínez in the school broom closet, an event he tells no one. Olga becomes his first lover, teaching him about intimacy. Gregory and Carmen perform as street entertainers, earning money outside the barrio. When Martínez accosts Carmen, Gregory challenges him to race an express train. Gregory crosses safely; Martínez is struck and killed. The incident transforms Gregory into a local hero. He thrives in high school under the intellectual guidance of Cyrus, an elderly Communist library elevator operator who leaves Gregory $800 and extracts a promise that he will attend university.

Gregory enrolls at Berkeley in the early 1960s, rooms with Timothy Duane, the son of a wealthy Irish family, and works multiple jobs. He marries Samantha Ernst, the emotionally detached daughter of a Hollywood producer. Their daughter, Margaret, is born prematurely, and Samantha falls into severe postpartum depression. During a visit, Judy reveals their father's abuse, warning Gregory to keep distance from the baby. The revelation permanently distorts Gregory's relationship with Margaret, leaving him afraid to show physical affection. Meanwhile, Carmen becomes pregnant by a journalist who refuses responsibility and goes to Olga for an abortion that nearly kills her. Pedro disowns Carmen, and she disappears, spending years in Mexico and Europe developing her jewelry craft under the professional name Tamar.

Gregory discovers Samantha's infidelities and enlists for military service rather than face his shattered marriage, harboring a secret fantasy of dying so he will not have to confront the pain of living (238). In Vietnam, he encounters his childhood friend Juan José Morales, who is later killed in combat. On a mountaintop, after a young soldier dies in his arms with his legs blown off, Gregory snaps: He throws away his weapon and spends the night carrying wounded men through enemy fire, earning the Silver Star. Sent to a village as an intelligence liaison, he bonds deeply with the villagers and experiences genuine community for the first time. He falls seriously ill and is evacuated to a hospital in Hawaii, where he resolves to become wealthy and powerful. Before leaving Vietnam, he meets Thui Nguyen, Juan José's sweetheart, who reveals that Juan José left her with a child.

Back home, Gregory finds no one wants to hear about the war. He visits the Moraleses to tell them of Juan José's death and reconnects briefly with Carmen, now selling jewelry on a Berkeley street corner, but their encounter exposes how far apart they have grown. Gregory joins a prestigious law firm, then marries Shannon, a young receptionist from Georgia whose alcoholism and infidelity echo his first marriage. Their son, David, is born hyperactive and unmanageable. Shannon abandons the family. Margaret, at 13, disappears into drug addiction and prostitution.

Carmen, contacted by the dying Thui, travels to Vietnam with help from Leo Galupi, an Italian-American who remained after the war. She adopts Dai, Juan José's son, and brings him to America. Galupi falls in love with Carmen, but she refuses him. Gregory opens his own law firm and takes on the case of King Benedict, the same soldier who rode with his family decades earlier. Benedict fell from scaffolding and lost 40 years of memory. Carmen, meanwhile, builds her Tamar jewelry enterprise through her own tenacity and a philosophy of employing refugees and marginalized workers.

The night his mother dies, Gregory has a devastating anxiety attack, experiencing visions of the dead. Timothy Duane introduces him to Ming O'Brien, a Taiwanese-American psychiatrist. In a pivotal session, Ming asks Gregory to examine the faces of the enemies in his recurring nightmare; Gregory discovers they all have his own face. Over five years of therapy, he confronts his traumas: Martínez's assault, his father's abuse of Judy, his mother's emotional absence, the war, and his pattern of surrounding himself with dependent people. He gives up alcohol, downsizes his firm, and endures a prolonged period of nightly terror he calls the Beast, gradually learning to face solitude.

Gregory resolves King Benedict's case when Bel Benedict, King's mother, confesses that when King was 14, she killed a white farmer who attacked her; King hit his head during the incident. Ming testifies that the compounding of this earlier trauma with the construction accident produced psychogenic amnesia, a condition in which psychological distress causes memory loss. The insurance company settles. Carmen, recognizing that the adolescent Dai no longer needs her constant presence, flies to Rome and proposes marriage to Galupi, now a successful art dealer.

A malpractice judgment threatens Gregory with financial ruin, but he faces the crisis with unexpected calm, feeling freedom rather than despair. Mike Tong, his bookkeeper, and Carmen intervene with loans that allow him to negotiate with creditors. Gregory reflects that what mattered most was not survival or success but recovering the soul he had lost. He addresses the narrator directly, recounting how they returned to the barrio and found the weathered sign of The Infinite Plan still standing. He tells her he discovered there is no infinite plan, only "the strife of living" (508). The narrator replies that perhaps everyone carries a plan inside, "but it's a faded map that's hard to read" (508).