Dr. Eli Watt, a widower, comes to a small town, considering himself a failure in his attempt to have a meaningful career in New York. He raises his son Jimmy as well as Letty, a baby whose mother has died in childbirth and whose father blames Watt and abandons the child. Watt dreams of returning to do research studies, but always something gets in the way: an epidemic, his children's needs, or the needs of his generally ungrateful patients. Only with the passing years does he come to find that his future isn't over and his past isn't quite the failure he believed.

A Broadway actress with a problematic past falls hard for the author of her new play.

A publisher bets an author that he won't be able to write a romantic adventure novel while on a walking trip from New York to San Francisco.

Four sisters come of age in America in the aftermath of the Civil War.