Between The Devil And The Deep Blue Sea opens in the early 1970s with young Cesar, a street tough of Afro-Cuban descent, standing outside a US Navy recruitment office at the crack of dawn. The Vietnam War is raging, the navy has only recently begun the serious process of integration, and the country is reeling from racial turmoil and unrest. So why enlist? Because Cesar sees it as his only hope of survival. He is on the run from a life of crime on the streets of Orlando, and from Mr. Mike, a charismatic, sociopathic gangster who was once a mentor but has now turned on him. Escaping into a navy wrestling with its history of racism and sexism, Cesar soon sees the absurdity of certain prejudices that seem as old as the US Armed Forces.
