Two Susans share a last summer. Susan Carson faces a mind-numbing factory job at the end of summer unless she can prove herself as a professional author. Becoming a companion to the dying artist, Susan Stone, means a chance to have time to write, time she does not have on a hard-working farm in Depression times. The older woman is indomitable, passionate and difficult, but warms to the younger. She shares the stories of her childhood, her dashing father, her marriage, and her life in the art circles of Paris and New York. She completes her last paintings. Young Susan learns of life both vicariously and at firsthand as she listens, writes, faces rejection, falls in love, and acknowledges that she must decide whether her heart or her talent will guide her life.