The novel tells the story of an aspiring young man who has just graduated from university. After a short work experience, he returns to his alma mater to concentrate on the postgraduate entrance examination in a part-time work-study mode. During a lonely summer vacation, he has a relationship with a young middle school teacher who comes to participate in correspondence studies. From the initial flirting with feelings to the later reluctance, it develops into a real love. Love, and various efforts to get married, separated and reunited under the test of life and death of both parties, the condemnation of public opinion, the intervention of social forces, and the huge pressure of self-moral ethics. This was also accompanied by the painful experience of the young man's failure in the postgraduate entrance examination, and finally the touching story of the two parties' attempted suicide and the final forced separation.