With all the insight and grace that have characterized her work, Alice Adams brings us close to Cynthia and Harry Baird, transplanted Yankees who moved to North Carolina from Connecticut during the depression to find a simpler world for themselves and their daughter Abigail. But life in Pinehill has become more complicated since the beginning of the war: the intricate rules and social order of this small Southern town are being transformed by the larger problems facing the world.

With Harry off in London to do his share for the war effort, Cynthia finds her life complicated not only by her own loneliness but by a growing awareness of racism and anti-Semitism, by the fear of Communism in the air. As her daughter, Abigail, and her best friend head off to college (Swarthmore and Radcliffe, respectively), and face all of the traditional complications of youth (and a few modem twists), we are given a story of two generations and of an America caught between its past and the future, forced to determine what it cherishes most and what it must leave behind.