A man looks back on his life as a boy in a small Welsh mining town. His reminiscences reveal the disintegration of his closely knit family while capturing the sentiments and issues of their time.

Magazine writer Schuyler 'Phil' Green, a widower who has just arrived with his mother and young son in New York, is assigned the task of writing an expose of anti-Semitism. As he searches for a new angle on the topic, he decides to pass as a Jew for several months, which causes no end of trouble for his ailing mother and young son. It also puts his new society girlfriend on the spot, since despite all her intellectual convictions, she cannot quite...