Frank Roberts and his son move to northern Maine, fresh out of a failed marriage. Having just earned a Ph.D., Frank takes a position in teaching and counseling at a small college undergoing explosive growth due to recent legislation making it part of a super-university. The rapidly expanding mix of new personalities, not all of them healthy enough for a university campus, creates an unexpected collegial challenge. Frank is a student too, having to learn about single parenting through the trial and error experience of juggling rotating custody of his son and daughter-Sally is in the Midwest, awaiting her turn with Dad. This is a plateful for the new professor, but a serious drug problem in the area has reared its ugly head and he is handed a role in stamping it out. A more appealing complication is the appearance of a returning student in his first classes, an attractive single parent of four children and romantic interest for a diffident professor Roberts. Her ex-husband, a local policeman, is somehow mysteriously connected to investigations of the drug traffic and the couple is trying to figure it out while addressing their own cautious entry into something special.