When a chance encounter with Helen, an attractive art dealer, leads to romance and marriage, television host Ike Martin becomes step-father to two adolescent boys. Helen and her sons have a lively set of friends, who amuse and challenge Ike. But uncertainty creeps in when his show is cancelled and Helen spends more and more time in New York and Paris. Ike briefly takes the role of amanuensis for a famous MIT engineer, a technological hero of the Apollo Project--but family complications take that away. As Ike struggles to maintain relationships with his wife and stepsons, and find his way to a professional future, he discovers a great deception. When their younger son disappears into the snowy Sierra Nevada, Ike is summoned to the rescue. He flies west from Massachusetts and drives into the mountains with a most unlikely sidekick, a satyr-philosopher who is just one of the unforgettable characters in this touching, entertaining first novel.