Bart Darling is a movie stuntman who is about to perform a stunt which may kill him. His girlfriend Lorraine, pregnant with his child, tells him not to do it or she will leave him. Bart asks his son Marcel, whom he has not seen in quite some time, to come out from New York and help him persuade Lorraine not to leave. But Marcel winds up falling in love with Lorraine himself, and must also resolve his feelings about Bart.
Bart Darling is a driven man, driven to escape the ghosts of his past through self-destructive behavior that includes parachuting off of bridges, drunken motorcycle rides, staged car crashes and endless dives into the bottom of a bottle. Still, it's a story about love and the fallibility of human beings--a poignant and tender novel.