Old friends Kit Marlowe and Millie Drake adopt contrasting lifestyles: Kit is a single, critically acclaimed author while married Millie writes popular pulp novels.

Jealous of best friend Kit, a critically acclaimed but financially unsuccessful author and playwright, Millie writes a novel, the first in a string of bestselling trashy novels. After eight years of neglect and taking a backseat to Millie's fame, her husband Preston leaves her. Another decade passes and Kit announces her intention of marrying the decade-younger Rudd. Millie thinks Preston wishes to reconcile, only to discover he is engaged. He also admits that he was in love with Kit, who had turned down his many advances. Feeling Kit to blame for the failure of her marriage, Millie flies into a rage and confronts Kit. Later, learning of Rudd's affection for Millie's daughter Diedre, Kit graciously steps aside to bless their union. In the end, Millie and Kit make up, sharing a champagne toast for each one's old acquaintance.—Ed Stephan <[email protected]>

Approximately twenty years, from 1924 to current day, is presented in the unlikely lifelong friendship between practical Kit Marlowe and melodramatic Millie Watson Drake. As young adults, they take different paths, Kit a professional one as a critically well respected but admittedly not populist novelist, and Millie a personal one as a wife and mother, to Preston Drake and Deirdre "Deedee" Drake respectively. But Millie, envious of Kit's path, believes she can do equally well or even better on the writing front. Unlike Kit who researched and painstakingly mapped out her stories to her own satisfaction, Millie churns out her pulp fiction with great speed and ease, and is rewarded with public success in the process. In Millie starting to neglect both Preston and Deedee in the process of basking in her newfound fame and wealth, Kit begins to contemplate having more of a personal life herself, mostly in Deedee longing for a true mother figure upon who she can rely, but also in a romantic life with one of the many men who admire and/or love her.—Huggo