England 1959: Against much resistance, the widowed Florence Green, in her mid-thirties, opens a bookstore and has to fight against intimacy and controversy.

Florence decides to open a bookshop in the "Old House" in the small coastal town of Hardborough in Suffolk. Although this is not an easy task, she manages to start her business on her own in the small town's old historic building. Despite loyal customers like the lonely Edmund Brundish, sales figures begin to collapse after a year. Because Mrs. Violet Gamart, wife of a general, would rather establish a cultural center in the old building, she also uses intrigue to do so.