Four friends are certain to conquer the world upon their graduation from college, but they face disappointment when jobs are scant due to the Depression. Their lives unfold with the pursuance of happiness despite some tragic adversities.

A well-cloistered and protected-against-reality group of college students get their diplomas in the heart of the Great Depression, and quickly learn that the piece of paper the diploma is written on is worth about eighteen-dollars-a-week in the job-market...for the lucky ones. Some of them fare even worse.—Les Adams <[email protected]>

Smudge Casey, whose dream is to become an athletic coach, the wealthy Fred Harper, Tom Martin, who married early on to Trudy Talbot, and the wisecracking Bob Bailey, are a tight-knit quartet of friends, all of whom graduate from college on the same day. Determined to change the world while keeping their friendship intact, the foursome is however forced to weather some harsh realities during the early years of the Great Depression.—Robert

Upon their college graduation, tight-knit friends Bob Bailey, Fred Harper, Tom Martin and Smudge Johnson believe the world is their oyster. They are all good, decent men who just want to get ahead through hard work in their chosen field from which they graduated. They all head to New York City to make their mark. Fred, born with a silver spoon in his mouth, is guaranteed a job working at his father's finance firm. Athlete Smudge will look for a job as a football coach at a high school or college. Tom, an architect, jokingly wants his first project to be to build a house for him and his long time girlfriend Trudy Talbot, who he eventually wants to marry after getting on his feet. And Bob is an aspiring journalist. Beyond Trudy, other women who end up being significant others or wannabe significant others join the four on their quest: Joan Harper, Fred's sister, who Bob has always been in love with and wants to marry, a union that is not sanctioned by her mother if only because Bob was not born with that silver spoon; and Susan Merrill, a librarian originally from Des Moines, who is trying to eke out her own living in the big city. They will all find that the real world during the Depression era is not as they had envisioned for themselves, and that no one is immune to the problems that the Depression seems to be throwing at the American populace in general.—Huggo