Jacob is a novelist living in Los Angeles very near Woodridge Park in Studio City, California. He goes to Woodbridge Park daily looking for interesting people who he might incorporate in his writing. While so doing he happens upon the dead body of a young woman hidden in the undergrowth of some bushes. He reports this to the police but before he does so he happens to watch a local TV News broadcast where a distraught husband who's being interviewed about his missing wife. It sounds just like the dead woman he saw in the Park. Jacob reports what he knows to the local police but when they go back to the Park the body is missing. "Lives in Transit" becomes the story of what happened to this woman and who was responsible for her death. Jacob decides to write a short story about this incident which he eventually publishes in the New Yorker magazine; he entitles it, "The Found Woman." This story he's written causes anguish for the husband of the dead woman. Writing is what Jacob cares about and does but it hurts when human relations are at stake and have dramatic consequences.