This third novel of Updike's Rabbit series examines the life of Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom, a one-time high school basketball star, who has reached a paunchy middle-age without relocating from Brewer, Pennsylvania, the poor, fictional city of his birth.

Harry and Janice, his wife of 22 years, live comfortably, having inherited her late father's Toyota dealership.

He is indeed rich, but Harry's persistent problems—his wife's drinking, his troubled son's schemes, his libido, and spectres from his past—complicate life.

Having achieved an opulent lifestyle that would have embarrassed his working-class parents, Harry is not greedy, but neither is he ever quite satisfied.

Throughout the book, Harry wonders whether his former lover, Ruth, ever gave birth to their illegitimate daughter.