Wade Talbot relishes the chaos of journalism. He starts as editor of weekly newspaper in North Carolina and becomes a reporter in New York just as the civil rights struggles explode into demonstrations across the country. Becky Anderson leaps from her little southern town to college, to New York and then to Europe, where through sheer grit she becomes a force in the movie business. Wade romanticizes his boyhood in the hills of home. Becky, perennially short of money, can't wait to break away. But something clicks between them. They compete, they quarrel, they savage each other, and one day in the deep, rolling hills of old Virginia they come together. Becky loses a baby. She and Wade begin to hike the 2,200 mile Appalachian Trail. Wade finds, finally, a theme for the novel he wants to write. But at a cost. He walks alone at the end to keep a promise, to climb a special mountain.