It's summer 1969 in New York City. Young, gay and full of dreams, Matty Dean arrives on a Greyhound bus and heads downtown. It's the time of the Vietnam War and the Apollo moon walk, but gay people are still being persecuted.

Seeking refuge from a violent husband, Jean secretly moves into the riverside cottage that belonged to her mother to clear out her possessions. Here, she meets a married stonemason - Redfern - with whom she gradually forms an intimate relationship. Both experience feelings of guilt for their inadmissable love for one another, and it isn't long before the couple's quiet affair of the heart is violently and tragically shattered.