After receiving his discharge from a two year stint in the army during the Korean War, Spencer Corbin moves to southern California, gets a job and spends his free time going to bars and movies. Not long after he arrives he begins having a series of related dreams about a beautiful woman called Lavender. He falls in love with her because she is "safe"---Spencer has no interest in marriage nor steady girl friend. One Saturday morning two beautiful women, Stefanie and Joanna, who are lesbians, move into a bungalow next to his. Stefanie is a free lance painter. Spencer asks her to paint a portrait of Lavender from his description of her. Soon Spencer falls in love with Stefanie but regards her, as with Lavender, a "safe" situation because she is in a relationship with Joanna. Ultimately, the relationship between Stefanie and Joanna cools and Stefanie falls in love with Spencer. However, Spencer never becomes aware of that and does not declare his love for her. Stefanie, who has never ever had any feelings for a man, does not declare her love for Spencer because she does not understand those feelings, and because she believes he might eventually dump her as he has done with other women. He has always made it very clear to her that he is not interested in anything smacking of a permanent relationship with a woman. The Lavender dreams continue unabated throughout the novel and after a while even Stefanie begins having Lavender dreams. No matter who dreams them the same three people (Lavender, Stefanie and Spencer) are always in them. Sometimes Spencer finds it difficult to separate his dreams from the real world in which he lives. Toward the end of the novel Spencer turns his wasteful life around and, thanks in large part to his love for Stefanie, pursues and obtains his Ph.D. in History from USC (he had obtained a Masters degree in History prior to his army service). Then he is hired as a professor at USC. This is the happiest time of his life and he finally decides to tell Stefanie that he loves her regardless of how she might take the news. But something intervenes to delay that confession. In the end do the two worlds, that of the dreams and that of the real existence, merge as one, or is one world shed in deference to the other?