The year is 1941, the place a small California foothill town. Nathan Reed, at age seventeen, bewildered by sex but sure he wants to be a writer, falls in among a little-theater crowd he hopes will stage his first play, and learns from them painful lessons in growing up.

From Nathan's ineffectual parents, Alma the fortune-teller and Frank the out-of-work musician, to Kate McCracken, the raffish cook at Moon's cafe, where the journalism and theater students gather for breakfast; from Kenneth Stone, the lonely teacher whispered to be a Nazi spy, to wealthy Desmond Foley, in whose sunlit swimming pool it is rumored handsome boys swim naked on weekends, Jack of Hearts teems with lively characters seen against a lovingly detailed background of times long past.