Young, newly married and intensely ambitious, Michael Davenport is trying to make a living as a writer. His adoring wife, Lucy, has a private fortune that he won't touch in case it compromises his art. She in turn is never quite certain of what is expected of her. All she knows is that everyone else seems, somehow, happier.

In this magnificent novel, at once bitterly sad and achingly funny, Richard Yates again shows himself to be the supreme chronicler of the American Dream and its casualties.