CHARLIE MESSINA WAKES FROM A COMA TO REPORT HAVING SEEN ST. AUGUSTINE, HIS DECEASED DAUGHTER JONI, AND A FAT BLACK DOG NAMED DUMBASS. HIS WIFE AND SONS THINK HE'S LOST HIS MIND.Photographer and retired college professor Charlie Messina, seventy-five and weary of a long life behind the veil (he was born with a caul) is led through a redemptive understanding of parallel time by some unsuspecting children-and a supposedly imaginary dog. In addition to his family, the cast of characters who travel along with Charlie on his odyssey back and forth through time and space-as well as real or imagined journeys to Madison, Wisconsin, Sanibel Island and Key West, Florida--include nine year old Joey, whom he meets at a lobster roll stand on Cape Cod, fifteen year old Manny who works at his father's Sunoco gas station in Newport, Manny's father Raul, who threatens Charlie with a tire iron, Charlie's longtime friend and part-time nemesis Mason, a big band Lothario, and arguably most important, a fat old dog he's named Dumbass.