'Swede' Levov is living the American dream. He glides through life cocooned by his devoted family, his demanding yet highly rewarding (and lucrative) business, his sporting prowess, his devastating good looks. He is the embodiment of thriving, post-war America, land of liberty and hope. Until the sunny day in 1968, when the Swede's bountiful American luck deserts him. The tragedy springs from devastatingly close to home. His adored daughter, Merry, has become a stranger to him, a fanatical teenager capable of an outlandishly savage act of political terrorism that plunges the Levov family into the political mayhem of sixties America, and drags them into the underbelly of a seemingly ascendant society. Rendered powerless by the shocking turn of events, the Swede can only watch as his pastoral idyll is methodically torn apart, clich by clich .