Asa Leventhal's wife Mary has left the city for a few weeks in order to help her elderly mother move from Baltimore to her old family home in the South.

During their conversation we learn that Asa's brother Max is a negligent husband and father who has practically abandoned his wife and two sons for itinerant work in Texas.

But these reflections quickly take on a tone of self-reproach as Leventhal briefly admits to himself that he has allowed his obligation to this extended family to lapse inexcusably.

This theme is expanded one evening when Leventhal, while walking in the park, is abruptly confronted by a man whose face he is unable immediately to place.

Leventhal mulls over his angry behavior at the interview and begins, despite the fact that Allbee is stalking him and spying on him and eventually turns up on his doorstep late at night, to accept some degree of responsibility.

Bellow uses the twin events of the death of Leventhal's nephew and the jarring conflict with Allbee to portray a period of self-examination and growth in the life of the protagonist.

Although his tangles with Allbee nearly end in disaster, he parts with his brother on good terms, and in a final chapter, we learn that he has been promoted, looks younger despite graying hair, and is about to become a father.