Richard Novak is a middle-aged divorce trading stocks out of his Los Angeles home. He is functionally dead and doesn't even notice, until an attack of intense pain lands him in the emergency room and an expanding sinkhole opens outside of his house.

On his way home from the hospital he meets a weeping housewife in the supermarket, helps save a horse that has fallen into the sinkhole, rescues a woman from the trunk of her kidnapper's car, and, after the sinkhole claims his house, befriends a reluctant counterculture icon.

In the end, Richard is brought back in touch with his family-aging parents, brilliant brother, beloved ex-wife, and finally, before the story's breathtaking finale, his estranged son Ben.