When a philandering husband accidentally finds himself lost during a rainstorm, he’s taken in by an elderly mortician and is forced to learn the ghastly origins of four freshly arrived corpses.

A disenchanted young Professor of Semantics at a California college learns of a distant relative's death in Missouri. He journeys cross-country to the funeral, then decides to spend the summer there and work as a laborer for a power-line company. In time, he meets a girl and falls in love but then faces an important decision as to which direction he wants his life to go.