An innocent young girl who is caught between her divorced parents attempts to understand life and its injustices.

Mr and Mrs Spragg are hoping to forge an entree into society and arrange a suitably ambitious match for their only daughter. Beautiful, selfish, and driven, Undine Spragg arrives in New York with all of the ambition and naive that her midwestern, nouveau riche upbringing afforded her. As cunning as she is lovely, Undine has but one goal in life: to ascend to the upper echelons of high society. And with a single-minded tenacity, Undine continues to...

A chance acquaintance brings together the prosperous bourgeois Wilcox family and the clever, cultured, and idealistic Schlegel sisters. As clear-eyed Margaret develops a friendship with Mrs. Wilcox, the impetuous Helen brings into their midst a young bank clerk named Leonard Bast, who lives at the edge of poverty and ruin. When Mrs. Wilcox dies, her family discovers that she wants to leave her country home, Howards End, to Margaret. Thus as Forster...

Natalie Seebring, aging and recently widowed, forms a bond with Olivia Jones, a writer and single mother who has been invited to spend the summer at Seebring's vineyard to help her write her memoirs.