Based on a true story, Dancing in a Jar elaborates on the real-life love affair of a young couple who leave New York City to live in the outport community of St. Lawrence, Newfoundland, during the Great Depression when the husband, Don Poynter, accepts a management position in the town's fluorspar mine. In a series of letters, some fictional and some real, Adele Poynter weaves a remarkable romantic tale through the life of a small mining town—capturing the sorrow and joyousness, the hardship and perseverance—to ultimately reveal how the loves of our lives are inherently united with our love of a landscape.