Elena, a depressed young Catalan translator, discovers that David, her former lover, is living in New York with a new girlfriend, where she will travel to obsessively look for him and try to win him back.

Wisconsin farm girl Elizabeth Carlson leaves family and her English teacher lover behind and escapes to New York. There she soon makes a career for herself as a fashion model. During a vernissage she's approached by a mysterious man whose motives are unclear...

A young black pianist becomes embroiled in the lives of an upper-class white family set among the racial tensions, infidelity, violence, and other nostalgic events in early 1900s New York City.