Heather and Mack have it all: a gorgeous home, two beautiful children--a boy and a girl--with nannies to tend them, and money enough for everything else they want. Still, they are both restless, looking for something to spice up their days--and nights.
Mack is a developer and wants to build a legacy, not just another mall, something that screams Culture. Heather is a frustrated writer, a stay-at-home mom who writes the occasional column for an online "green" journal.
On a trip to Los Angeles, Mack meets Zoltan Barbu, a writer, a political refugee and a charmer with no money and no prospects. Mack impulsively invites him to come to New Jersey and stay with him and Heather in their too-big house. He believes Zoltan will provide literary companionship for Heather and might provide Mack with the cachet he has been looking for.
At first, it is heady stuff to have Zoltan's company and conversation far into the evening. "Sleepiness seemed a small price to pay for the exhilarating uplift of Zoltan's presence," Shulman (Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen) writes. But his presence soon begins to pall. He sleeps half the day and goes out at night. There is no tangible proof of a book being written. Heather and Mack begin to feel duped by their star boarder. This trio, with their belief in their own entitlement, play out the scene in an amusing way, and no one teaches anyone how to live--primarily because none of them has yet figured it out. --Valerie Ryan, Cannon Beach Book Company, Ore.