The prologue opens with a taut account of the final minutes of an ill-fated DC-6, chartered to fly a ragtag entourage of artists to Hawaii for a July 4, art show. 

   In flashback,  on Wednesday, June 29,  artist Mariel Foster learns that her lover of six months is married. As she copes, Mariel, her friend Mary, and the rest of the group—an ex-rodeo rider, a one-eyed painter of architecture, a black collage artist, a lesbian couple and a closet gay—count down to the fatal flight.