Anatole is celebrating his wedding; old friends and ex-lovers are also invited, including Chris, who broke his heart 25 years ago and then left town. The once dreamy Chris has become a tough security professional, protecting American engineers in Nigeria. Chris scoffs at the settled lives of people in the small town of Poughkeepsie and can hardly believe that his old friends are serious about their lives. Confronted with his ex-lover, Anatole begins to doubt whether he has taken a wrong turn in his life. With a time jump of 25 years, Russell returns to the characters of his novel "Brackwasser" and leads them through the contrasting realms of "possibility" and "reality," in search of an answer to the question of whether it is possible to find satisfaction in the middle of life.