An American artist living a bohemian existence in Paris, Tom Warshaw is trying to make sense of his troubled adult life by looking back at his extraordinary childhood. The year is 1973, and thirteen-year-old Greenwich Village native Tommy Warshaw is on the brink of becoming a man. While his bereaved single mother continues to mourn the death of his father, Tommy escapes his own grief by causing trouble at school and making afternoon meat deliveries with his best friend, Pappass, a mentally challenged janitor. Following the romantic advice offered by Lady, a prostitute incarcerated in the infamous Greenwich Village Womens House of Detention, Tommy also experiences his first taste of love. Yet when an unexpected tragedy radically alters his world, Tommy must make a life--defining choice--one that will compel the adult Tom Warshaw, thirty years later, to finally confront his unfinished past.