Lewis Johnson is the episodic biography of an elderly African American looking back over his life as it nears its end. Born in 1932 to a poor family in rural Texas, Lewis thinks of himself and his family as slaves of the Baker family, despite the legal ending of slavery in the United States decades before.

His childhood is spent in backbreaking work from dawn to dusk in the fields. At night he sleeps in a stable he shares with the horses and poisonous snakes. Despite his hardships, Lewis casts an observant eye on his family, his masters, his community, and Nature around him. His philosophical bent finds expression through the eagles he watches in the sky, and they inspire thoughts of freedom within him.

Lewis is especially fond of his grandmother Lola, who tells him stories of the past and the brutality of their masters toward his father and grandfather.

After a few years of schooling, Lewis runs away from slavery and spends his adult life between Houston and Austin. He experiences racism and exploitation and finds it difficult to hold down a job even though he longs to work. Much of his life is spent as a bum on the streets.

Lewis returns a dropped purse to its owner, Annette, and she becomes a key figure in his life and bears him four children. It is because of a TV at the bar where Annette works that Lewis gets to see Martin Luther King, who has a profound influence on him.

Unable to maintain a stable home, Lewis is also taken care of by another woman whom he helps to get home when she is drunk.

Chance encounters bring Lewis back into contact with Joanna and Michael Baker, the children of his former masters, and some resolution to the past is achieved because of Lewis’s stoic forgiveness and decency