In the Salinas Valley, in and around World War I, Cal Trask feels he must compete against overwhelming odds with his brother Aron for the love of their father Adam. Cal is frustrated at every turn, from his reaction to the war, to how to get ahead in business and in life, to how to relate to estranged mother.

Two employees at a gift shop can barely stand one another, without realising that they are falling in love through the post as each other’s anonymous pen pal.

An atomic bomb test in the Arctic Circle unfreezes a hibernating fictional dinosaur, a Rhedosaurus, that begins to wreak havoc in New York City.