Innocent, old-fashioned, self-aware, Cheever's people are summoned by strange and improbable events to ponder the values they have been taught to trust...decency, common sense, nostalgia, even truth. Stunned by these encounters, they nevertheless survive.

A worn-out poet finds peace in his heart as he lays his Lermontov medal at the foot of the sacred angel; a prosperous suburbanite contemplates his predicament when his wife joins the cast of a nude show; a guileless and romantic well digger, anxious for a bride, visits Russia, falls in love and returns home "singing the unreality blues"; and a miserably married man fantasizes a beautiful lover who comes to him for strength, love and counsel while he tends the charcoal grill in the backyard.