Broad humor and bitter irony collide in this fictional autobiography of Rabo Karabekian, who, at age seventy-one, wants to be left alone on his Long Island estate with the secret he has locked inside his potato barn. But then a voluptuous young widow badgers Rabo into telling his life story — and Vonnegut in turn tells us the plain, heart-hammering truth about man's careless fancy to create or destroy what he loves.