Paul Metzger's life is in a state of disrepair; a writer in his mid-thirties, he is divorced and underacheiving. One winter afternoon he travels into New York to visit three people; an elder half-brother who wants little to do with him; a disgraced, dying father, once infamous as a Nazi sympathiser; and an ex-wife whom Paul still loves.

But Paul soon realises that he is being watched, and it is this fourth, unplanned and violent, encounter that will chanage more than one life, forever.