Almost before he knows it, Her­man Broder, refugee and sur­vivor of World War II, has three wives: Yad­wiga, the Pol­ish peas­ant who hid him from the Nazis; Masha , his beau­ti­ful and neu­rot­ic true love; and Tama­ra, his first wife, mirac­u­lous­ly returned from the dead. Aston­ished by each new com­pli­ca­tion, and yet resigned to a life of eva­sion, Her­man nav­i­gates a crowd­ed, Yid­dish New York with a sense of per­pet­u­al­ly impend­ing doom.

Hav­ing escaped death in the Holo­caust, Her­man Broder set­tles in Brook­lyn with his sec­ond wife. The trou­ble starts when he becomes deeply involved with anoth­er woman, at which point he learns that his first wife has sur­vived and come to America.