The story of several generations of a family, as seen through the wonderings and wanderings of it youngest daughter; uses dreams, stories, trips, journals, and letters to trace the power of commitments and consciousness, memory and forgetting, reality and dream, mythology and religion, and mental illness and vision. As the Arthur family gathers to hold a vigil beside the dying father, James, their voices drift in and out over 80 years and two continents to recall their individual lives, as Yvonne, the narrator, discovers her final role.