Sometimes those who have the most seem bent on throwing it away. Meet Bob Sterling, a comfortable middle-aged professor, a specialist in the life of Edgar Allan Poe, married to a former student with whom he has a young son. In the space of a week his family, marriage, home, career, sanity, and life are brought to the brink of ruin in the aftermath of a trip he makes with a student, the intense young poet Sienna Chu, who brings to life Bob's long-harbored...

When Stan's dreams of making the JV basketball team fall through, he finds himself aware of the unexpected attention of mysterious Janine Igwash. Then Stan's father arrives on the scene with his four-year-old half brother, and things become truly tilted.