The book also explores how incidents in New York City influence the politics and social climate of northern New Jersey.

Lisa is facing 30, is three months away from ending her acrimonious divorce from Bryan, and is constantly rebuffing her child psychologist/writer mother, who questions her daughter's life decisions.

Marc, in between plugging his successful novel Goombah, is a star professor at the State College of New Jersey, which is poised to become a university.

Nina and Tim Simon, a mixed couple and mutual friends, attempt to bring Lisa and Marc together at a party in Montclair, New Jersey on the very night that an Italian mob in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn murders Yusuf Hawkins, a Black teen.

All these activities are interwoven with the charged political context of the New York City mayoral race, which ends in Democratic Party (United States) candidate David Dinkins beating Republican Party (United States) candidate Rudy Giuliani to become the city's first Black mayor.