Peter Jernigan, the eponymous narrator, is an alcoholic widower in his late 30s who tells the darkly comic story of his attempts to raise his teenage son Danny in the suburbs of New Jersey in the year following the suicide of his wife. When Jernigan begins an affair with Martha, the mother of Danny's girlfriend and a self-styled "suburban survivalist" who breeds rabbits in her basement, his drinking turns harder and his life begins to spiral completely out of control.