Anthony's father, Gerald Mohr, is a well-known radio actor before slipping to the Hollywood B-list thanks to the advent of television. Accepting the lead in a dying Swedish TV series, he falls for the script girl and divorces Mohr's mother, who goes on to meet and marry another divorcee, credit card industry pioneer Stanley Dashew.

As his stepfather's career rises and his biological father's eases downward, Anthony tries to find his place. One weekend he's sailing on his stepfather's fifty-eight-foot catamaran; the next, his Swedish stepmother tells him that they're poor. Coming of age in a time when divorce is rare and viewed as shocking, Anthony lives at the edges of what others regard as a dream world, a place where reality and fantasy blend, maps lead to the homes of the stars, and obstacles abound.