Plot summary

Anna is a young woman who discovers her mother had an affair with a married man for 15 years, so she starts her own affair with a married man. She works for a Los Angeles public radio station. She often must care for her alcoholic father and comply with his many demands. When she finds love letters, revealing her mother's longtime involvement with someone else, she develops a romantic notion of the idea as something suitable for herself. She meets a photographer, Oliver, who is happily married and a father. Their physical attraction is immediate and they begin a torrid affair, but he cautions her from the start that he has no intention of leaving his family. She has no objection, enjoying the sex and intimacy for the time being, until feelings develop and she begins to desire a permanent relationship, intruding on his privacy in the process, with unhappy consequences for all. In the end she finally meets the man her mother had an affair with and she decides to take a job offer at a radio station in San Francisco to give herself a fresh start in life.