With the Vietnam War ending in the early 1970s, many 1960s anti-war, pro-civil rights activists are at loose ends trying to adjust their youthful idealism and fiery commitments to current, more prosaic realities. Searching for “meaning,” they learn indigenous handcrafts and organic farming, explore alternative sexual lifestyles, raise children, and dabble in small town politics. Others criss-cross the country like nomads. Karen, a young, pregnant woman, has labor pains and prepares for the birth of her daughter. Peter, sent to prison for aiding military deserters, is released after two years, but does not know how to reconnect with society. He visits John, a blind potter, who no longer has Peter’s revolutionary zeal and wants to enjoy a bucolic lifestyle with his male lover. A woman abandons her husband and two children to find her “true self.” A young man tires of living in a communal farmhouse with people he has little in common with and hitchhikes around the country. Many of these survivors of what was once called "the Movement” lament that there are no longer political rallies and causes to pull them together, now that the events that politically awoke them are over. However, a few former revolutionaries have made the transition from youthful foment to a gentler adulthood. Helen, an anti-war filmmaker working on a documentary about Vietnam, finds serenity with her two grown daughters. Joe has opened his own bar. Karen has her baby.
Summary No. 2: An old woman from Italy tells her granddaughter, Joann, and a young friend about her early years in New York City, learning to sew as a child and doing piecework at home. She left school at thirteen and spent her life working menial jobs for long hours and low pay. Even now, in her eighties, she works all day as a bookkeeper at a shoe wholesale shop. At a mountain nudist camp, Elizabeth uses acupuncture on another woman, who is pregnant. Karen leaves reluctantly, because living at the camp has been good for her. Meanwhile, Nick, a hippie, picks up his friend Lou, who lives with Amber and her child, but dislike being trapped in a domestic relationship. Elsewhere, Helen, an older filmmaker widowed during World War II, talks with her daughter, Elizabeth, about the dangers of settling into a sterile, selfish life. Elizabeth does not live with her own children, but misses them as people. Her sister, Karen, is pregnant, but wonder if the baby’s father will stay with her. Elizabeth sees Karen off at a train station. Helen goes over footage she shot in Vietnam with her assistant, Joann. Karen returns home to her commune, feeling that she understands her mother more now that she is pregnant. At a military prison, Peter is released after serving two years for aiding military deserters. Suey, a young woman, picks him up at the gate and drives him back to the apartment she shares with her small child, Hobie, and others. Peter complains that none of their friends came to see him, even though he was the only one among them who was prosecuted. When Suey gives him his bag of clothing and other effects being kept at the apartment, he gives them away. Peter visits John, a blind potter, and John’s boyfriend, Sal. Jimmy and his little boy, Dylan, arrive at a rural retreat where several women live. Dylan has lived with others, but Jimmy wants him back. Dylan’s mother (Sonntag) suggests they return to California where Dylan was raised in a commune. Meanwhile, as they drive, Lou and Laurel, the mother of another one of his babies, discuss leaving their commune home and living as a couple. Lou wants to live with a more eclectic group of people, instead of hippies. Laurel says she will miss the saunas in the commune sweat lodge, followed by dips in the cool, nearby stream. A young woman interviews a Native American on a reservation.