Story of a New England boys' school and of one of the students who is infatuated with an instructor's wife who has Multiple Sclerosis. The woman struggles to show her strict husband how love rather than demands helps the student to blossom, but finally she falls into a coma. While she is able to have some 'looking down' awareness of what is happening, her coma is what brings her husband to an understanding of the needs of others.

Follows the choices made by three young women - one a drug dealer, one an addict, one a pregnant teen - in Jersey City.

A famous horror writer finds inspiration for her next book after she and her husband take in a young couple.