Awkwardly bookended by novelist Nathan Zuckerman's (David Strathairn) visit to his 45th high - school reunion, it's the story of Seymour «Swede» Levov (McGregor), a Jewish «golden boy» and star athlete, who marries Dawn Dwyer (Jennifer Connelly), an Irish - Catholic beauty queen, and settles into
a seemingly bucolic life on a farm in Old Rimrock, a WASPy western New Jersey township.