Summary

Maggie Salt, an extremely beautiful and troubled actress with a destructive whirlpool of a personality, is cracking up fast - she's 'out of her tree'.

Maggie Salt, an extremely beautiful and troubled actress with a destructive whirlpool of a personality, is cracking up fast - she's 'out of her tree'. Her oldest friend, Cissie O'Brien, the stand-up comedienne and national darling, decides to take Maggie to see their mutual friend, Helena, who is now the toast of Broadway. But Maggie disappears into the freezing February night as soon as they arrive, no one knows where. As the search for their friend continues, alarming divisions occur in the lifelong relationships of Cissie, Helena and her stoic husband Luke. Helena has always been utterly self-centred and now Cissie, haunted by the tabloid outing of her relationship with her lover Jenny back home in London, disappears too. So, two of the closest of friends are lost separately somewhere in snowbound Manhattan. Meanwhile, Maggie has been rescued by a stranger, Michael, who offers her sanctuary of a highly ambiguous kind.