A mean, loud-mouthed town bully is talking on the phone one night during a storm when, in a freak occurrence, a bolt of lightning strikes a telephone pole, travels down the phone wires and hits him. He is declared clinically dead, but miraculously recovers shortly thereafter--with a completely new personality and, he claims, the ability to communicate with the dead.

The young jazz saxophonist Morris Poole is at the height of his career. When his wife dies he is almost overcome by grief and blames himself. When after a while he finds a new love, he ends up in a situation that reminds him of his wife's mysterious death.