The first section, titled "Spring" and told in first person, chronicles the entanglement of Columbia University student Adam Walker with French political science professor Rudolf Born, who meet in New York City in the spring of 1967 and who form an alliance to publish a literary magazine.

Adam's story of the summer of 1967 is also framed by his having sent his manuscript, written in 2007, to a college friend of his, James Freeman, who we are told is a famous author.

Adam inserts himself into the lives of these women and contrives a scheme to atone for guilt he carries stemming from his actions following the mugging in New York.

She concludes the story by describing in her diary how she, in 2007, has a final strange contact with Rudolf Born, at his remote island home in the Caribbean.

As with much of Auster's work the novel deals with questions of shifting identity, puzzles and illusion, a persistent sense of dread, and of characters feeling trapped by circumstances over which they have no control.