A youngster from a very accomplished home loses his parents and is forced to live with a distant aunt. By taking him in, the aunt's life is flipped upside down. She raises him in a rural village in the Hudson Valley, away from the pressures of NYC. The boy dedicates himself to being a major success in life. At his high school graduation ceremony, he gives a speech about the road to success where he mentioned passing through the Golden Portal. The speech follows him to college at Syracuse University. There, he meets a beautiful female student and three other male classmates that become part of a very successful undertaking. The glow of success and the glamor of New York is shaken when terrorists fly into the World Tarde Center. The ending is unpredictable, to say the least.