"It was a dry, dusty summer day in New Hampshire, Paul and Mary Emmons were having lunch in a diner called Happy's when Mary happened to notice a dog in a car in the parking lot with his head turned upside down".

Thus begins the strange and compelling saga of Paul Nash, a.k.a. Paul Emmons, a fallen accountant whose inadvisable return to New England, the region of his crimes, sets the stage for this darkly comic novel of love, death, guilt, redemption, and the various forms of clam chowder. More than a dog's head gets turned upside down in the course of Paul's transatlantic misadventures, as gangsters quote Conrad and analyze Sargent paintings, a ghostly swimmer speaks in a lost language of household hints from 1929, and a mysterious maroon van gets the last word. Through it all Paul strives to find and accomplish his purpose in life, and myriad characters contrive to tell their stories -- of unkept promises, nightmarish evenings, identities lost and found.