One summer Jim Sterba, veteran war correspondent, accepts an invitation for a weekend visit from a woman he barely knows, author Frances FitzGerald. He arrives and discovers a secluded little house on the Maine coast, with evergreens and blackberry bushes all around, views of forested mountains, and a fjord full of seabirds and sailboats.

He visits again and gradually falls in love with his host as much as her place. The two couldn't have had more disparate childhoods, but their intelligence, ambition, and independence propelled them both into writing careers and kept them single, until now.

In this Tracy-Hepburn-style romance, the down-to-earth newspaperman charms the sophisticated New Yorker. Their long path to real love has us cheering them on, as well as itching for a visit to idyllic Mount Desert Island.