Lawrence Goodchild is a professor, a novelist, and a soon-to-be divorcé. Lawrence’s perfect life started falling apart around him when his publisher dropped his first novel and his agent stopped returning his calls. Before the beginning of the current school year, he was demoted from his dream job as a professor of Creative Writing to become a lecturer of Colonial American Literature, his wife left him for their marriage counselor, and he began conversing with the protagonist from his novel-in-progress. In a last desperate act of hope, Lawrence decides to take a group of ten students and his teacher’s assistant with him on a weekend trip to a writers' conference, where he is scheduled to read from several of his latest short stories. Lawrence must keep a hold on his deteriorating psyche as he navigates his way around adolescent lust, publishing industry snobbery, run-ins with the police, and his own mounting despair.