The sleep specialist

the long version

Robert and May Sinclair arrive in New York City in 1934. He's an aspiring playwright, she's an actress, and they're desperately poor. Robert is an insomniac who works frantically on his first play by day and walks the streets of the city by night. He finds himself drawn into the life of a mysterious man named Orson Price and into an unlikely friendship with Mrs. Amalfi, the sleep specialist, who attempts to help Robert overcome his insomnia. Robert's encounter with the city takes him from an exotic apartment house in Gramercy Park to a seedy hotel in Hell's Kitchen, from the wards at Bellevue to the literary world of Greenwich Village. As he struggles with emotions that terrify him, Robert is plunged into depths that nearly do him in.