Hank Devereaux, a fifty-year-old, one-time novelist now serving as temporary chair of the English department, has more than a mid-life crisis to contend with when he learns that he must cull 20 per cent of his department to meet budget. Half in love with three women, unable to understand his younger daughter or come to terms with his father, he has a dangerous philosophy that life, & academic life, could be simpler, but he fails to see the larger consequences of his own actions or of the small-world politics that ebb & flow around him, as his colleagues jostle for position & marriages fall apart & regroup. The despair of his wife, & the scourge of the campus geese, he is a man at odds with himself & caught somewhere between cause & effect.