A young woman struggling to become a novelist has her life go into a tailspin. Her first novel is rejected her non-committal boy friend decides to take a powder her best friend moves to Mexico for an acting job and her mother announces that her long presumed dead father is actually a hippie photographer who has come to town to meet her. Sinking into a depression at being a total failure at 28 she starts fantasizing about suicide. In her depths of despair she meets various eccentric characters including a chain-smoking Santa Claus and an obnoxious literary agent. But her belief in herself is only restored when she meets a patient in a hospital where she does volunteer work.