Against the backdrop of race riots, the Vietnam War, and the countercultural revolution, Manhattan-based Luther Garatdjian comes of age. The second youngest in a troubled family, Luther feels, as a college sophomore, the proof is conclusive: he was not born with the right stuff to succeed in life. And yet, on the cusp of the Summer of Love in 1967, an unexpected door opens. A budding artist from an upper middle class family, Mona Van Dine represents his hope of escape from the familial turmoil and failure he has witnessed.
When Mona leaves New York City to attend art school in Boston, Luther fears that she will leave him behind as well. Dependent on amphetamines and alcohol to ease his sense of intellectual inferiority, he grows increasingly desperate to keep Mona close, as she remains his lifeline. The sexual instincts that lead him astray are in line, as he sees it, with the national zeitgeist and serve, in his clouded mind, as insurance against annihilation should Mona, now in a distant city, herself begin to stray.
The winds of change blowing in the culture affect Luther in other ways as well. The white Afro he grows is less his freak flag than cover and protection from taunts about his misshapen head. A new, more voluble Luther begins to emerge. At times contentious, belittling, even grossly offensive, he fills the air with pronouncements on everyone from Cervantes and Norman Mailer to "little" Bobby Kennedy and "dawdle dancer" Eugene McCarthy, and offers his musings on such things as the nature of time, writer's block ("What's the problem? It's only words"), and history. In a state of grandiose lunacy he accompanies the astronauts on their lunar mission, has a meetup with Charles Manson, and lends an ear to a distraught Teddy Kennedy following Chappaquiddick.
Following his arrest and brief incarceration on a drug charge, he has an epiphany that leads him into the renting office of the rooming house the family manages. The sums of money he extracts unbeknownst to others he rationalizes as simply claiming his patrimony.
When a tragedy befalls the Van Dines, Luther finds that all is not as it initially appeared with Mona and her family. He discovers that the family he has run toward, material blessings aside, bears a disturbing similarity to the family he has run from, and that the life he has been pursuing may not bring him to the finish line he is seeking.