A friend's chance citing of a hand-lettered for sale sign sets Jan and Stu on a path that will change not only their domestic world but their emotional one as well. Along the way, they find that the path ahead can be crooked, strewn with pitfalls just waiting to become pratfalls. Life at the university and in the theater never prepared accident-prone Stu for his new life as a would-be farmer, carpenter, and mountain man, nor Jan for some scary encounters with nature in the wild. Meeting the challenges of a new way of life among people so seemingly very different from themselves, they overcome obstacles with resolve and not a little Jewish humor that help them learn what it really means to be a mensch.