This guide was created using the following version of this text: Duchovny, David. Bucky F*&ing Dent. New York: Farrer, Straus, and Giroux, 2015. Print (First Hardcover Edition, 2016).

The book opens in 1978 with Ted Fullilove, a graduate of Columbia University with a BA in literature, throwing peanuts at Yankee Stadium. Ted is a struggling novelist who hates fiction and insists on writing deconstructive works to no avail. Soon after his introduction, Ted learns that his father, Marty, who became rather distant after his divorce from Ted’s mother, and even more distant after her death, is struggling with lung cancer.

After visiting Marty in the hospital, Ted decides to live with Marty for a while to help him. At Marty’s apartment, the relationship between the two is initially rather tense, but becomes less so once he gets to know Marty’s death-nurse, Mariana. Ted falls in love with Mariana and awkwardly tries to pursue her throughout the novel. During this time, Ted learns from his father’s friends that Marty always seems healthier when the Red Socks win. So, Ted decides to trick his father into thinking that the Red Socks win every game by replacing the scores in the paper with previous scores.

At this point, the reader learns through separate narratives that Ted was a sick child and almost died, which Marty blames himself for. Mariana’s daughter died years ago from bone cancer.

Eventually, Ted discovers his father’s semi-fictional book, The Doublemint Man. Through the book, he learns that Marty may have loved another woman during his marriage. Ted finds the woman, Maria’s, address in the book, and Mariana and Ted decide to stake the address out. They meet Maria and eventually bring Marty to see her. Ted learns that the two were never together, due to the fact that they were both married when they met. Marty and Maria have sex, and later, Mariana and Ted have sex.

Soon after this, Marty learns that the Red Socks scores were fake causing him to collapse into a coma. In the hospital, Mariana rejects Marty. Ted decides to buy two Red Socks playoff tickets which wakes Marty up. The two go on a roadtrip and never quite reach the game. Outside the stadium, the two listen to the radio as Bucky Dent leads the New York Yankees to a victory against the Red Socks. Even though Marty vowed that he would live until the Red Socks won the world series, Marty realizes that losers run the world and dies in Ted’s car.

Mariana finally accepts Ted’s love and they bury Marty. In the book’s epilogue, Mariana and Ted get married and have two children. Also, Ted becomes a successful novelist after finishing his father’s narrative, The Doublemint Man.