"The Long Way Around" is about four college students, two young women and two young men, who have reached the top of the academic pecking order and don't like what they find there. Mark and Jimmy are roommates at Dartmouth College. Mark, a middle class Philadelphian, is unwilling to make the compromises necessary to "fit." Jimmy, a wealthy New Yorker, is tired of the preppy games he has played all his life and refuses to play them anymore. Terri, the strong-willed daughter of an industrialist, becomes involved with Mark though they argue continually and her parents are against the relationship, trying to break it up. Jimmy falls in love with Terri as well. Smythe, from the Deep South, a beautiful, talented pianist, was raped in high school and is working her way through the college's male population. The story is about the relationships that evolve amongst these four misfits who are constantly at odds but who grow increasingly dependent on each other, especially after graduation when Terri announces that she is pregnant and, despite her parent's wishes, wants to have the child.