The story begins with a distant, omniscient narrator describing Mary, the main character. She is a history professor who has made a career of avoiding controversy and expressing only safe, approved views. After fifteen years of teaching at Brandon College she is forced to look for a new job when the college suddenly closes in the wake of an administrator's reckless and disastrous mishandling of its funds. Mary's belief in the rewards of prudence and caution is shaken by the evidence that anyone "could gamble a college."

Mary's mid-career job search yields only one offer: at a "new experimental college in Oregon." The narrator's description of the place makes it seem more like a high school than a college: "Bells rang all the time, lockers lined the hallways, and at every corner stood a buzzing water fountain." Mary dislikes Oregon and continues to look for other...