Bob Cunningham was on a steady and sure career path from a reporter's desk to the editor and publisher's office of his newspaper - until new reporter Madison Palmer showed up in blue jeans tight enough to take blood pressure readings. Bob and his wife, Dorothy, were settling in comfortably to their marriage - until Dorothy began making plans for an expanded family and Madison began making plans for Bob. Then, caught in the whirling worlds of politics and power and crime, they're all driven into new directions, with Bob uncertain of tomorrow, with Dorothy determined to become a mother, and with the blue-jeaned reporter searching "for the Madison Palmer you fell in love with."