May Sarton's celebrations in this book center around the friendships that flowered in her life from age twenty-six to age forty-five--between the end of
I Knew a Phoenix and the beginning of
Plant Dreaming Deep. Her subjects include her father, the noted science historian George Sarton; people in the arts--Elizabeth Bowen, Louise Brogan, Jean Dominique; and people who lived lives remote from the center--Marc, the vigneron of Satigny, in the foothills of the Jura mountains, and Quig, the painter of Nelson, New Hampshire.