The book includes homes he has designed in the mist-covered Hudson Valley, on a bluff above Lake Champlain, on the windswept shores of Block Island, and on the coast of Maine. Schafer shares the stories of these houses and their owners, exploring the choices made for architecture and interiors, and reemphasizing his guiding principles: how to create classical buildings that live modern; how to adapt buildings to different regions and ways of life; the connection to landscape; why fancy can coexist with simple, and traditional with modern.