Emma Woodhouse, aged 20 at the start of the novel, is a young, beautiful, witty, and privileged woman in Regency England. She lives on the fictional estate of Hartfield in Surrey in the village of Highbury with her elderly widowed father, a hypochondriac who is excessively concerned for the health and safety of his loved ones. Emma's friend and only critic is the gentlemanly George Knightley, her neighbour from the adjacent estate of Donwell, and the brother of her elder sister Isabella's husband, John. As the novel opens, Emma has just attended the wedding of Miss Taylor, her best friend and former governess. Having introduced Miss Taylor to her future husband, Mr. Weston, Emma takes credit for their marriage, and decides that she rather likes matchmaking.

The year is 1965: a year thrumming with promise and hope and change all around the globe. But for two people, change seems out of the question. Their worlds are rigid, stuck, fixed—and completely contradictory to one another. Holly is a frazzled and reclusive mess from the wrong side of the tracks—well, the wrong side of everything, really—struggling to keep herself afloat as she copes with the loss of her nursing school scholarship two years before. Simon, on the other hand, is charming, arrogant, smart-mouthed and spoiled rotten—the only thing he has ever wanted for is a pair of proper lungs, as his own have been slowly ruined by the effects of Cystic Fibrosis. When Holly joins a peculiar non-profit agency in hope for nursing experience, their worlds are suddenly conjoined a little too close for comfort. Through bickering, old maps, collect calls and a great many letters, Holly and Simon are intertwined in a journey to find a future they never knew existed, suspended in the transience of yesterday, today and tomorrow.