"Ex-basketball player Harry 'Rabbit' Angstrom has acquired heart trouble, a Florida condo and a second grandchild. His son, Nelson, is behaving erratically and his wife, Janice, decides in mid-life to become a working girl. As, through the winter, spring and summer of 1989, Reagan's debt-ridden, AIDS-plagued America yields to that of George Bush, Rabbit explores the bleak terrain of late middle age, looking for reasons to live."

Joanna reluctantly moves with her husband and children from New York City to the suburban community of Stepford, Connecticut. But when life in Stepford begins to seem too perfect, Joanna and her new friend Bobby investigate a mysterious conspiracy among the town's husbands.

The story follows the life of a suburban, white, middle-class man during a time of family crisis. Jerry's favorite diversion is to take his small plane and fly solo over Long Island. When his daughter and her fiance arrive from Oregon to announce their marriage plans--Theresa's dangerous pregnancy, he thinks back over his life and begins to face his disengagement with it and with his relationships with others: with his deceased wife, the circumstances...