Middle-aged professor Godfrey St. Peter, by all accounts, leads a successful life: he is devoted to his job as well as to his wife, Lillian, and his two daughters, Rosamond and Kathleen. On the eve of moving into a comfortable new house, St. Peter analyzes his life, his family situation, and his friendships. His daughters' marriages have removed them from the honre, and the loss of his cherished student (and former prospective son-in-law), Tom Outland, have Ieft him feeling without purpose. St. Peter's desire to remain in his old study, and cling to the past, sparks deep introspection in this bittersweet story exploring emotional dislocation and renewal, mid-life angst, and family life in a 1920s Midwestern college town.