People in trouble Sarah Schulman

It was the beginning of the end of the world but not everyone noticed right away.

It is the late 1980s. Kate, an ambitious artist, lives in Manhattan with her husband Peter. She's having an affair with Molly, a younger lesbian who works part-time in a movie theater.

At one of many funerals during an unbearably hot summer, Molly becomes involved with a guerrilla activist group fighting for people with AIDS. But Kate is more cautious, and Peter is bewildered by the changes he's seeing in his city and, most crucially, in his wife.

Soon the trio learn how tragedy warps even the closest relationships, and that anger - and its absence - can make the difference between life and death.