Thea Cranbrook, recently widowed and burdened with the problems of two grown-up daughters, has little time for thinking of her own, but when Harriet leaves her husband and Lizzy falls in love with a man old enough to be her father she finds herself facing, for the first time, the fact that her own marriage might have been less than perfect. The difficulties with which the various age groups enmesh themselves in each other, so that the feelings of mother and daughters merge and are resolved, make an absorbing study of two generations, hoping and striving for an elusive happiness.