In 1976, thirty-one year old actor Luke Banks is driving from New York to Los Angeles, having achieved his life-long dream of being cast in an upcoming movie. Along the way he runs into his past in the form of an accidentally conjured and very talkative family ghost. This pushy gypsy ghost haunts his dreams and waking life and insists he must write his stories down. Reluctantly Luke does begin to write and finds he can't stop. With self-awareness, a sense of dramatic irony and sardonic humor, his tales move from small swampy towns in Florida featuring "that old time religion," to the fading glitter of 1960s Miami, to southern college campuses, to the big cities on both coasts and many locations between. Against the background of his own sexual awakening and an era on the verge of total transformation, Luke comes to an entirely new outlook on what the American Declaration of Independence calls "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."