Ernest Hemingway is in Cuba, trying to finish his final novel The Garden of Eden, a strange and prescient story that explores the boundaries of gender and his own secret sexual proclivities. Penelope is an English professor, who, decades after Hemingway's death, becomes obsessed with this book, and feels its influence on her own life and her infatuation with a young male student. Catherine is the young wife in The Garden of Eden who speaks to us as she begins to test the confines of her fictional existence. The three narratives entwine and progress to a fascinating and moving conclusion.