It's the fall of 1979 in New York City when 23-year-old Anton Winter, back from the Peace Corps and on the mend from a nasty bout of malaria, returns to his childhood home in the city's famed Dakota apartment building. Anton's father, the famous late-night host Buddy Winter, is there to greet him, himself recovering from a breakdown... An evocative and wildly absorbing novel about a family living in New York in the year leading up to John Lennon's assassination.