On March 12, 1980, wealthy Long Island businessman Carl Fletcher is ambushed in his driveway in Middle Rock by two men who hood him, force him into the footwell of his Cadillac, and drive him away. He is taken to an unknown cavernous location and locked in a closet. His wife Ruth, pregnant with their third child and battling morning sickness, only realizes something is wrong that afternoon when she calls the factory and learns Carl never arrived.

The FBI sets up at the Fletcher home along with local police. Ruth's domineering mother-in-law Phyllis takes charge, calling political connections, while family lawyer Arthur Lindenblatt arrives to handle questions. The agents quickly recognize this is a kidnapping for ransom given the Fletchers' enormous wealth. Middle Rock erupts in gossip, with neighbors swapping theories about affairs, Carl's sister Marjorie, or suicide, while secretly envying the Fletchers' wealth.

On the fifth morning, a man calling himself a colonel of the "Caliphate Freedom Fighters of the Valley of Palestine" demands $250,000 dropped at JFK's Eastern terminal. Ruth, forced to bring her tantrum-prone son Bernard along, makes the drop, then is redirected to LaGuardia by a note on her windshield, which turns out to be a dead end. She returns home distraught to learn Carl has been found alive at a Mobil station on the Northern State Parkway, bound and traumatized but physically intact.

Phyllis tells the recovering Carl that the kidnapping happened to his body, not to him. She moves the family into a cottage on her estate, sells their house, and they work to normalize life. Ruth gives birth to daughter Jenny in October. The FBI traces the marked bills to Drexel Abraham, a former factory truck driver, and his brother Lionel, who confesses to masterminding the plot. Carl had been held in the basement of his own factory the entire time. Both brothers die in prison within years, and the supposed terrorist organization proves fictional. Most of the ransom money is never recovered.

The Fletchers reframe the kidnapping as merely "a dybbuk in the works"—a temporary malfunction. The children grow up: anxious Nathan becomes a land use lawyer in Middle Rock; Bernard ("Beamer") becomes a screenwriter; brilliant Jenny escapes to become a labor organizer. The narrator hints, however, that the family's belief that suffering has earned them permanent safety and prosperity is dangerously mistaken.