A young man who grew up on Cotton Mill Street uses the social changes of the more than thirty years of his life as a backdrop to tell the stories and changing fortunes of ordinary people swept along by the tide of the times. From city to countryside, factory to family, kinship to romance, past to future, the people around the protagonist, his friends, coworkers, and neighbors, all struggle, strive, and grow along their own paths in life. Their personalities and fates intertwine to create a vivid, colorful world filled with the warmth and bustle of everyday life.
