For Entertainment Purposes Only

David Barnes leaves a disastrous two year marriage and the state of Nebraska to try and start a new life in Seattle but seventeen months later he's crashing on his younger brother's couch. Brother Rick is a computer game tester and heads to a conference in Houston leaving David to figure out how to make enough money to eat. Well, he does that- coming up with an on-line service Zodiac service that promises to bring in a lot of money but no happiness. Soon he has fallen for the office manager he hired who is fourteen years older than him and has a six year old kid to boot.. Brother Rick has to fire David to head off a sexual-harassment suit and David blunders into an affair with artsy Jackie Bass, editor of Poetry on Napkins, and as rich as she is smart and cultured. Jackie's dad is trying to have David investigated but she won't believe it. David goes off for a solo camping trip in the North Cascades and almost winds up dead but returns to finally realize that there is no shortcut to growing up and sometimes what you have been avoiding is the key to moving forward.