On a spring day in Vermont, seventy-nine-year-old painter Hope Chafetztells the story of her life to Kathryn, a young interviewer from New York.Questions send Hope back to her youth, to the heady postwar days ofAmerican art and her relationships with the artists who defined theirtimes. As the day wears on, Kathryn and Hope - interviewer and interviewee- try to understand one another across the gulf of age, experience and timethat lies between them. And subtly, as each comes to know the other, theirrelationship changes . . .