A Polish-Jewish family comes to the U.S. at the beginning of the twentieth century. There, the family and their children try to make themselves a better future in the so-called promised land.

Thirty-something Isabelle spends her time going from her tiny, solitary West Side apartment to that of her grandmother on the Lower East Side. While her grandmother plots to find her a romantic match, Isabelle is courted by a married, worldly author, Anton, yet can't seem to shake the down-to-earth appeal of Sam, a pickle vendor.

Stingo, a young writer, moves to Brooklyn in 1947 to begin work on his first novel. As he becomes friendly with Sophie and her lover Nathan, he learns that she is a Holocaust survivor. Flashbacks reveal her harrowing story, from pre-war prosperity to Auschwitz. In the present, Sophie and Nathan's relationship increasingly unravels as Stingo grows closer to Sophie and Nathan's fragile mental state becomes ever more apparent.

A nutty inventor, his frustrated wife, a philosopher cousin, his much younger fiancée, a randy doctor, and a free-thinking nurse spend a summer weekend in and around a stunning - and possibly magical - country house.