Faith, hope, and love are necessary things. Scoundrels, fools, principalities and power are unnecessary things which either by evil intent or accident oppose the will of God. Emmet Jordan and his friends are on the side of the necessary things--always challenging. sometimes dangerous, never trivial. Emmet's life is defined by two crises, the first when he is twenty and the second when he is thirty-five and not fully resolved until he is seventy. Emmet is rich and smart. but as the man who knows him best says, "Emmet is informed in the abstract, but he sometimes gets stuck in the concrete."