Claire leaves her pretentious and arty husband because he declared that her dream journal did not have enough Freudian imagery. Claire realizes that her dream is actually to spend some time alone on her personal and artistic development as a novelist. She rents an apartment above a bistro in New York City's Greenwich Village. Claire pours all of her pain and doubt into a first novel featuring an unconventional heroine named Nevada whose trials mirror Claire's own. As the novel progresses and Nevada takes on a life of her own, Claire finds herself changing as she realizes how much her life has been affected by a dark secret from her past. As she struggles to fully become her own woman within the whirlwind of the Manhattan art scene, Claire knows that the character she has created will only be able to come to life when she acknowledges her difficult past.
