Marion has intense poetic ambitions, but the financial pressures of his recent marriage have forced him to take a low-level teaching post with the University of Hawaii, where he soon finds the academic life unbearable. Routine lectures lack the stimulation of the creative process and rapidly lead to nervous collapse, which alienates his new wife, Kendall. She disappears with a female friend and Pam, the friend's daughter, acts as intermediary, trying to salve Marion's feelings with cliches of popular fiction, which he rejects. On the rebound from poetry, he judges everything according to strict literary standards, and in his troubled state believes he can locate Kendall by writing scenes. If they "play", she is there; if not, he must try elsewhere. In a way that closely parallels the Biblical story of creation, he painstakingly rebuilds his life in the course of a week, but using prose rather than poetry, which has proven far too dangerous.

How he manages to reestablish a viable relationship with his wife and the world in general, makes up the burden of this clever tale of frustrated literary ambition.