CELESTE & CHRIS takes place in California in the 1960s, a turbulent time in American history encompassing the push for sexual and political liberation by a youth forced to grow under religious and social strictures that have become intolerable. Celeste and Chris create, a bond as outcast children that they imagine will be, unbreakable. Celeste dreams of marrying Chris someday, but Chris struggles with his feelings of queer identity. Celeste's mother Bernadette, ostensibly a devout Catholic, is overbearing, but tinged with humanity, as we see, her loneliness in the wake of President Kennedy's assassination and her descent, into alcoholism. Chris's parents, Dr. and Mrs. Armstrong, dote on their son but remain ignorant of his homosexuality.
At the age of sixteen, Chris is, sent to boy's military school because of a prank gone wrong. Celeste, also sixteen, runs away from home to find him. On her way, she meets a charming and alluring Vietnam War draft-dodger named Matt, hiding out in a farm-who seduces her and offers her a barn to stay in while she tries to break Chris free. At first, she is attracted to Matt and his promises of liberation through the conceit, of "free love," but soon understands the sexual stipulation that comes with his initial, generosity and promise of protection.
While at military school, Chris becomes intimately involved with his art instructor, an African-Frenchman named Luc. This relationship ultimately leads to Luc leaving his position at the school in order to prevent the discovery of his illicit relationship with a student. Luc moves into the barn with Celeste. To earn his keep, he helps Matt grow marijuana. Matt and Luc begin a sexual affair, which at first shocks Celeste, but she finds herself unable to resist, their insistent invitations to join them. Despite her feelings of betraying Chris and the danger of the situation, she complies more than once. Her unexpected desires for Luc and growing revulsion of Matt frighten her, but she's unwilling to give up what she, considers her hard-won liberation. However, she pregnant and doesn't know who the father is.
Chris graduates from military school and files emancipation papers. He moves into the barn with Luc. Celeste moves into Matt's cabin in the farm. She has a baby boy they name Thoreau, after Celeste's favorite writer and her inspiration. Now clear to him that Luc is the father, Matt becomes more abusive with Celeste. He insists that she should have another child to make him a father, also.
When Thoreau is six months old, Luc and Matt disappear. On their quest to find Luc, whom Chris believes might have been blackmailed, Chris is arrested for harboring a runaway. Even though he and Celeste are the same age, he's emancipated and she is not. Celeste is, sent home to her parents, who are relieved Celeste is safe, but also upset about the baby's race and the social shame, it might bring to their family.
Chris is, freed from jail and comes home, to his parents and, to Celeste and Thoreau. Desperate to find Luc, thinking he was, forced to flee with Matt, Celeste and Chris leave for Paris, where he had told them his parents live. Chris and Celeste once again find comfort in each other during this journey, which leads to the kind of intimacy they had never experienced before. Upon their return to California, they are unaware they've conceived a child. During this time, Chris begins drawing political comics. He gains a cult following, after his "Get Out of the Draft, Plead Fag" cartoon is, published in underground papers. They pledge to become a new type of family and are, buoyed by the strength of their new, bond now tested and made stronger, by the vicissitudes, that are often, the price of any type of liberation.
