Sam Preston is a small-town newspaper publisher who suffers from wanderlust. Leaving his family, he thinks well-provided for, he packs a suitcase and hits the road. Ten years later he comes back to find the newspaper shuttered and his family gone.
A penniless heiress, a disillusioned nun, the suicidal playwright they both love, a hapless art forger and the playwright's wife converge on the empty Long Island home of an aging matriarch and squabble among themselves about their relative success or failure.
In the early 1900's Tennessee, a loving family undergoes the shock of the father's sudden, accidental death. The widow and her young son must endure the heartache of life following the tragedy, but slowly rise up from the ashes to face the hope of renewed life.
After cantankerous and miserly Herbert Kalness insults his daughter's fiance and prospective in-laws at a dinner party, Mrs. Kalness devises a scheme to teach her husband a lesson in good manners.
