Seaview is a place for rage, humour, inarticulate love, and untranslatable skill; in short, an American place, where human fortunes are hazarded on the half-natural landscape of fairways, roughs and greens. Allen, a golf hustler, is travelling cross-country from California with his wife, Melinda, who is dying of cancer. Outside Tucson they meet up with Bob White, a Pima Indian. Melinda's calm resignation and the tenderness of her relationship with Allen strikes a sympathetic chord with Bob's American Indian view of nature and death. They are all headed for Cape Cod, to a golf course built on ancient tribal grounds.