Meeting old friends can be enlightening, fun, dangerous and painful. Just ask Jake Burns, a trial lawyer and published novelist who is called upon to organize such a meeting. Ten years after the death of his wife, Janie, he fulfills her last wish, reuniting their closest friends from Yale one last time. As undergraduates in the early 1980s, Jake and Janie belonged to one of the university's "secret societies," and Jake sends out invitations to the other members, most of whom haven't seen each other since Janie's funeral. Once the best and the brightest of the Ivy League, the group that arrives in New York is now, by most standards, an accomplished and esteemed bunch.