Burned out by teaching journalism, Michael Bridge launches an investigative news magazine, inspired by the idealism of the photojournalist whose heart he broke, to prove that Americans still want truth over spectacle. Against all odds, subscriptions climb. But then Michael collapses after putting in endless workdays and fitful nights.

When he recovers, his ex-wife Lauren, a celebrity psychic with a gift for self-promotion, convinces the media that Michael’s affliction has transformed him into the recipient of extraterrestrial messages. As Y2K anxieties fuel a nationwide frenzy, Michael’s reasoned appeals have zero effect in dissuading Lauren, much less her busloads of rabid devotees: his hospital bedpan sells at auction and the shutters are stripped from his Greenwich Village townhouse and sold piecemeal as “relics.” Michael is now a reluctant messiah of quasi-enlightenment in the public’s eyes, while Lauren sets her sights on converting his magazine into a pseudo-mystical rag.

The chaos draws Sarah Lancaster home, the photojournalist Michael never stopped loving, from documenting the world’s killing fields. Though wary of trusting the man who failed her once before, she joins Michael for one last gamble to turn Lauren’s own mythology against her before Michael loses both the magazine he built to defend the truth and the woman whose ideals inspired it.