An inspirational speaker becomes reinvigorated after meeting a lively woman who shakes up his mundane existence.

Susan Morrow receives a book manuscript from her ex-husband – a man she left 20 years earlier – asking for her opinion of his writing. As she reads, she is drawn into the fictional life of Tony Hastings, a mathematics professor whose family vacation turns violent.

An optician grapples with the Indonesian mass killings of 1965-1966, during which his older brother was exterminated.