Angie wonders what her life would be like if she had married a former boyfriend who became a famous sportscaster. She takes the train home to spend Christmas with her family and inexplicably finds herself 10 years in the past. With the advice of the train’s enigmatic conductor, Angie has the chance to revisit that Christmas and learn what — and who — is truly important to her.

Joseph Harris, a legendary but troubled playwright, comes to a small Michigan town at Christmastime to mount his latest play. Greeting the cynical New Yorker is a young, aspiring writer who challenges his literary hero to be the icon he’d hoped for. Harris wants no part of Michigan or its small-town theater, and he has no interest in being the young man’s hero. As soon as he arrives, Harris makes plans to return to New York on the next train out. Desperate and scrambling to keep him in town, the young man must face his hero and explore the tangled relationship between the dreams of youth and the wisdom of age.