It's 1968, and the world is crumbling around Mike Burns, a disillusioned Brooklyn youth attending his second year of college. His cousin and constant childhood companion, Sally-Boy, went missing two years ago. The two called themselves twins because they were born the same day. As Mike tries to lead a "typical college life," he is haunted by Sally-Boy's disappearance. Adding to Mike’s problems, his father angrily nags him to cut his hair; a professor fills his head with passionate, troubling ideals; a friend’s draft dodge pulls him into incriminating circumstances; his Jewish roommate is in the doghouse with his own parents for dating the “wrong” girl; and Erica, Mike’s new girl friend, has secrets of her own. College parties provide a quick fix for Mike, but after the assassination of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., campus tensions rise to the breaking point. How will Mike deal with the turmoil of young adulthood—existential questions of morality, conscience, obligation—when everything in his life, familiar and new, is falling apart? And he still has to find Sally-Boy.