It has been nine years since we last met Jesse and Celine, the French-American couple who once met on a train in Vienna. They now live in Paris with twin daughters but have spent a summer in Greece at the invitation of an author colleague of Jesse's. When the vacation is over and Jesse must send his teenage son off to the States, he begins to question his life decisions, and his relationship with Celine is at risk.

Austin, Texas, is an Eden for the young and unambitious, from the enthusiastically eccentric to the dangerously apathetic. Here, the nobly lazy can eschew responsibility in favor of nursing their esoteric obsessions. The locals include a backseat philosopher who passionately expounds on his dream theories to a seemingly comatose cabbie, a young woman who tries to hawk Madonna's Pap test to anyone who will listen and a kindly old anarchist looking for recruits.