Set in the privileged beach community of East Hampton, New York and chronicles one pivotal summer in the lives of famous children's book author Ted Cole and his wife Marion. Their once-great marriage has been strained by tragedy. Her resulting despondency and his subsequent infidelities have prevented the couple from confronting a much-needed change in their relationship. Eddie O'Hare, the young man Ted hires to work as his summer assistant, is the couple's unwitting yet willing pawn - and, ultimately, the catalyst in the transformation of their lives.
A handsome and successful young man with a lovely fiancée, James Jackson seems to have everything going for him, but his life begins to unravel when he develops an acute sense of paranoia. At first, he notices little things at his office that he takes as signs that people are out to get him, but soon things escalate, with Jackson convinced that a perfume ad on television holds sinister messages aimed at him. Is Jackson losing his mind, or are the threats real?
A Yugoslav stage actor marries an American girl in Belgrade and has a child with her, when his career downhill out of political reasons he develops a drinking habit, his wife leaves him and takes their daughter to U.S.A.