Desmond Frank, an elderly American expat living in Italy, is reflecting on the life he gave up more than half a century ago. Back then he was a successful Hollywood screenwriter, working on a major studio script for a gritty piece of underworld noir and conducting a secret relationship with the film's leading man. But when Desmond's friend and collaborator, leftist director John Marsh, learned that his wife was about to expose them both to the House Committee on Un-American Activities, the two men were chaotically thrown into making impossible choices: between complicity or defiance, the compulsion to live a lie or the freedom to leave everything behind. Conjuring a feverish vision of one of the country's most notorious periods of national crisis, Night for Day illuminates the eternal dilemma of both art and politics: how to make the world anew. With as much to say about the early years of the Cold War as about the political and social conflicts that continue to divide the country today, Night for Day is expansive in scope and yet tenderly intimate, exploring the subtleties of belonging and the enormity of exile - not only from one's country but also from one's self.