John Smith was born into a poor farming family in Missouri. Sent to a university to study agronomy, he instead falls in love with English literature and embraces the life of a scholar. Over the years, Smith experiences a series of disappointments: marrying a "real" family alienates him from his parents; his career is hampered; his wife and daughter coldly turn their backs on him; A transformative new love experience ends under threat of scandal. Driven deeper and deeper, Smith rediscovers the stoic stillness of his ancestors and confronts an underlying loneliness. John Smith emerges not only as an archetypal American, but also as an unlikely existential hero,

The central theme of the story is surely that of love, of love's many forms and of all the forces that oppose it. "It [love] was neither a passion of the mind nor of the heart, it was a force that encompassed them both as if they were just the matter of love, its specific substance."