An enthusiastic young woman runs away to Chicago to start a new life. She is soon confronted with the emotional coldness of the big city and has to search for her place in the scheme of things.

A 17-year-old girl lapses into a coma and wakes up 20 years later.

Secret agent Harry Hannan suffers a mental breakdown when a botched mission in Mexico results in the death of his wife. He is sent to a mental asylum, after which he eventually returns to work. But, once again, he begins to doubt his sanity when he receives a bizarre death threat written in Hebrew. Not knowing which of his colleagues wants to kill him, Hannan teams up with pretty young college student Ellie Fabian to attempt to unravel the mystery.

A young nihilistic New Yorker copes with pervasive urban violence, obscene phone calls, rusty water pipes, electrical blackouts, paranoia, and ethnic-racial conflict during a typical summer of the 1970s.