Mignon Edwards is passionate about writing. She leaves college after her junior year at Nebraska Wesleyan, determined to become a writer, but she falls in love with Alan Starks. His indifference to sex from the first night of their marriage sets the stage for the emotional conflict that pervades the story.
They begin their life together in Chicago where they explore and embrace the classical music world of Alan's opera-loving family and enjoy the speakeasies of the Al Capone era. Then Alan takes a position as chief civil engineer for a dam building project on the Niobrara River in Nebraska. The boredom of living in the Sand Hills inspires Mignon to write a story about life as an engineer's wife. It is accepted for publication by a professional magazine. Encouraged by the success, she writes a mystery romance novel. Doubleday accepts it and assigns her to editor, Harry Maule, who also works with Sinclair Lewis and Stephen Benet, and who will become her lifelong friend.
From the Roaring Twenties to World War II, Mignon and Alan move from Chicago to New York and back to Chicago, from Connecticut to Washington, D.C. to a Florida military base, motivated by Alan's career ambitions and Mignon's yearning for the perfect house, as well as her need to experience places for the settings in her novels.
Mignon and Alan travel in the U.S. for pleasure and for inspiration for her novels. They explore the haunts of ex-pats like Hemingway and Fitzgerald in Europe. Mignon works at her writing with discipline and dedication no matter where she lives or travels; the earnings from her popular novels provide a lavish lifestyle, and she is often referred to as the American Agatha Christie.
While Mignon's career soars, the marriage flounders. Mignon struggles but writes. She writes and writes--through a divorce and a brief, disastrous second marriage. Another divorce and remarriage.
This novel explores the inspirations of a writer and examines the intwining of life and work, the role of love in meaningful work. The novel also reveals the world of editing and publishing along with the role of reviewers in the golden age of literature.