The eminent botanist Benn Crader, a man of peculiar sensibilities and caring intelligence, more than capable of experiencing true love, struggles when the world demands more prosaic abilities. His nephew Kenneth, an adjunct professor of Russian literature, is willing to do whatever it takes to protect his uncle and safeguard the magic and purity of such an exceptional man. The day that Benn decides to marry the beautiful and rich Matilda, he is trying to achieve what we human beings search for, even knowing that everything is mere hope: love. Although it entails suffering, although it destroys and causes havoc, although, as Benn himself maintains, more people die from heartbreak than from the effects of radioactivity, "can anyone be blamed for the fact that they prefer beauty, that eternal joy, as Keats said? " Through characters that at any moment could jump from the pages of the book, come to life and start walking through the world, Saul Bellow makes it very clear that there is no longer any place for natures capable of love.