Jock Muir, a lone-wolf Scot, the eternal traveller in hope who never arrives, marries an innocent in Montana, concealing his other self as a pulp-fiction best-seller writing under a pen-name. But she accidentally finds novel sketches and mistakes them for murder contracts. Marriage crisis follows. Muir is a wanderer in search of his version of the American Dream. Ultimately he is semi-detached, happier with dreams than with fellow-men. Hollywood was where insincerity was dedicated lifestyle. Montana is where sincerity could be faked. The only relationship he cannot escape is with himself. Betrayals, infatuations, the marriage lottery, false accusations, deceitful masks people hide behind, are the themes of a kind of road novel roaming from New York to Hollywood to San Francisco to Montana.