Ticket to Exile recounts Miller’s coming-of-age in Depression-era Orangeburg, South Carolina. A closet rebel who successfully evades the worst strictures of a racially segregated small town, Miller reconstructs the sights, sounds, and social complexities of the pre-civil rights South. By the time he is forced into exile, we realize that this fate was inevitable for a young man too intelligent and aware of the limitations of his society to remain there without disastrous consequences.