The plot of the story is composed of the first-person narratives of the four members of the Hamson family, with successive digressions from memories, letters, dreams, and fantasies. The incidents of their common life are explored from the perspective of each narrator. 

In this journey through history, personal and social, the sense of betrayal for the lost myths, for the illusion of security cultivated during the Eisenhower era and with which the generation of the 50s was raised, is rendered in the best possible way by Phillips' associative narrative technique.