An old man falls violently in love and does valiant battle against unscrupulous polluters in John Cheever's ineffably joyful last novel.

In a nightmarish prison a convict named Farragut struggles to remain a man. Out of Farragut's suffering and astonishing salvation, Cheever crafted his most powerful work of fiction.

Eliot Nailles and Paul Hammer meet, presumably by chance, on Sunday at church in Bullet Park. Nailles is open, no secrets. Hammer is, dangerously for him, not what he seems.
The third crucial character, Tony Nailles, is the one who holds the bag. How he got into it and how in the nick of time he appears to get out is the crux of this tale.

Once upon a time the Wapshots of St. Botolphs were distinguished for their unshakeable good opinion of themselves. But the family members have drifted far from their New England village - and into the demented caprices of the mighty, the bad graces of the IRS and the humiliating abyss of adulterous passion. A novel of large and tender vision, "The Wapshot Scandal" is filled with pungent characters and outrageous twists of fate, and, above all, with Cheever's luminous compassion for all his hapless fellow prisoners of human nature.