Farmer Jimmie Rudd hosts wife Sarah's youth buddy Melanie, who returned to the sleepy coastal town after making a mess of her London life to finish her doctoral literature thesis on romanticism. Her affair with neighbor Ben Fox, MD, seems doomed after meeting his hostile mother in law. Jimmie's farm is also doomed, hence probably his marriage. But the couple's elderly best friends, the Barnes, suddenly won a fortune they have no real use for. A storm brings everything to a climax.