A portrait of Fred Fay follows an outwardly successful but selfish man's descent into alcoholism and failure and his slow, difficult recovery into a wholly new and meaningful life.
What starts out as a Bonfire-of-the-Vanities type tale of a shallow, hard-drinking NYC ad exec in the Mad Men-like 60s transmogrifies into a Nicholas Sparks-type love story. After hitting bottom (losing his wife, girlfriend, job, and home), Frederick Fay consults a therapist. Against the therapists' advice, he decides to cash in his chips and buy a small deserted island off the coast of Connecticut. As Frederick meets some real, working class townspeople in the harbor town, he begins to make true friends--something he was never able to do earlier in life, despite a glamorous lifestyle. This novel works as a lesson in "money can't buy you happiness."