Jack Livings' debut novel centers on a fatal blizzard that devastated New York City in 1978. More specifically it focuses on our narrator Hazel Saltwater's recollection of it: On the night the storm hits, 6-year-old Hazel is hiding out in the back room of a riotous party in her family's posh Upper West Side apartment building. Here, she meets the elderly Albert Caldwell, whose plan to drown himself later in the night is foiled by a stranger — who, coincidentally, eventually becomes Hazel's husband. Hazel is drawn to this momentous night, a formative moment of her life, and she decides to reconstruct its events, tracing the disparate characters who shared it with her and the unlikely ways their lives intersect.