Wisconsin farm girl Elizabeth Carlson leaves family and her English teacher lover behind and escapes to New York. There she soon makes a career for herself as a fashion model. During a vernissage she's approached by a mysterious man whose motives are unclear...

A young black pianist becomes embroiled in the lives of an upper-class white family set among the racial tensions, infidelity, violence, and other nostalgic events in early 1900s New York City.

Elena, a depressed young Catalan translator, discovers that David, her former lover, is living in New York with a new girlfriend, where she will travel to obsessively look for him and try to win him back.