Meet James Samuel Vincent - an affluent Manhattan attorney who shirks his modest Irish American background but hews to his father's philandering ways. James muddles through a topsy-turvy relationship with his son, Rufus, which is further complicated when Rufus marries Claudia Christie. Claudia's mother - Agnes Miller Christie - is a beautiful African American woman who survives a chance encounter on a Georgia road that propels her into a new life in the Bronx. Soon after, her husband, Eddie Christie, is called to duty on an aircraft carrier in Vietnam, where Tom Stoppard's play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead becomes his life anchor as he grapples with mounting racial tensions on the ship and counts the days until he will see Agnes again.
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