The events of a summer night in 1971 that began for adolescent Jimmy Dolan as an affair with his high school English teacher, and ended with a tragedy, have haunted Jimmy and infected his relationship with his Connecticut hometown and all who live there. In 1986, four years after fleeing the town for a new life in Utah, leaving his wife and family behind, Jimmy returns for the funeral of his father, killed by a hit-and-run driver. As he searches for his father's killer, Jimmy also confronts the secrets of his own past. And he tries to achieve a hard-won truce in difficult relationships with those he had left behind - his ex-wife Beth and son Jim, his mother and elder brother Gary, and particularly his old best friend, Vietnam veteran Roger Powell. Jimmy and Roger's relationship, with the bonds and strains and events of the past constantly coloring the present, is an uneasy combination of memories and expectations that never connect without a struggle.