Like Rip Van Wikle returning to his home town to find that all has changed, Nathan Zuckerman comes back to New York, the city he left eleven years before. He quickly makes three connections that explode his carefully protected solitude. One is with a young couple with whom, in a rash moment, he offers to swap homes. From the moment he meets them, Zuckerman is drawn to the erotic challenge of the young woman, Jamie, and all that he thought he had left behind: intimacy, the vibrant play of heart and body.