Joe Bell has achieved a stable career as an effective copy writer in a large San Francisco advertising agency, but he has no interest in pursuing advancement into a position as an account executive or agency management. His current romantic interest, who has exactly those career goals, loses interest in him for this seeming lack of a meaningful goal. Joe has never kept his real ambition a secret, as he regularly works at improving his efforts to write fiction. Having some savings and now without any personal attachment, Joe decides that the time has come to make a full time commitment to writing fiction for an extended period of time to test if he can complete a draft of the novel he has begun and revise it for submission. He quits his job and takes a year's lease on a cabin near a small town in the high reaches of the Sierra. There, Joe is steadfast in his commitment to write daily and his work progresses. However, the life of a small town in the mountains has its own unique share of inescapable community and personal conflicts and civic responsibilities which attract his participation, and there are even attractions of the opposite sex as well.