Thomas Cooper, Administrative Assistant at The House of Balloons, travels the road between the dream world of his boyhood and the wasteland of his manhood, time moving simultaneously in opposite directions, set on a collision course with the beginning.On the boyhood end of the road are memories of his father, a county agent who conducts business from a local tavern; his mother, a devout woman from the last generation of bread makers; and an old cruising pal, now an employee of the correctional community in town.On the manhood end of the road, somewhere just beyond the purgatory of The House of Balloons, are his older sister Jane, an academically gifted college professor, and Peg, another hometown girl and part-time girlfriend making good at an elite Midwestern university.And all along the road between these worlds, the apparitions of dreams play their haunting melodies as Thomas progressively is interred in a life of clerical duties.