"Welcome to the zoo," Samira is advised as she’s admitted to an in-patient care facility in the wake of a suicide attempt. As she slowly familiarizes herself with her fellow residents and their idiosyncratic traits, a makeshift community takes shape.
After multi-millionaire Ted Ammon is found bludgeoned to death at his East Hampton estate, the fingers point to his estranged wife, Generosa Rand, and her lover, an electrician named Danny Pelosi.
On Ironbound Island, native Fiona McKay arrives from Europe with her teenage daughter Clair, hoping that the peace of the island will help the girl get over the death of her boyfriend. The girl finds comfort in the company of a visiting American girl and more so in the stories of Celia, a crazy old local who weaves enchanting tales which cleverly combine her own experiences on the island with mystifying legends.
Interconnected stories examine situations involving the five senses. Touch is represented by a massage therapist who is treating a woman, while her daughter accidentally loses the woman's pre-school daughter in the park. The older daughter meets a voyeur (vision), a professional house-cleaner has an acute sense of smell, a cake maker has lost her sense of taste, and an older man is losing his hearing.
Guy Luthan, a British doctor working at a hospital in New York, starts making unwelcome enquiries when the body of a man who died in his emergency room disappears. After the trail leads Luthan to the door of an eminent surgeon at the hospital, Luthan soon finds himself in extreme danger people who want the hospital's secret to remain undiscovered.
