Willie, a disenchanted loner, is visited by his sixteen-year old Hungarian cousin Eva. Willie's equally slacker best friend Eddie also meets Eva, and the three become loose friends, until Eva decides to leave to visit Willie and Eva's Aunt Lottie in Cleveland. After a while Willie and Eddie are surprised to find that they miss Eva's companionship and take off for Cleveland in an old car. Finding Cleveland in winter to be disappointingly cold and unattractive, the three leave Cleveland for sunny Florida, landing there in off-season. Accidental involvement in a drug deal provides some unsuspected good fortune until it becomes time for Eva to go back home to Hungary. Karen Effiel is an author writing her latest novel. Her story revovles about an isolated man named Harold Crick. What she doesn't know is that her fictionalized character is real. Harold is an IRS agent who has lived a dull existence. One day he begins to hear Karen's voice as she narrates what she is putting down on paper. Harold enlists the help of a literary professor to find out what is happening and ends up changing things about his life. He begins to have a relationship with his IRS client, a government-hating bakery owner named Ana Pascal. Harold, however, finds trouble when he hears that Karen plans to kill him.