Dr. Donald Vaughan wants to move his family from the East Coast to California to escape an unhappy life and begin a new one. His family protests, but he is adamant. His wife, Reeney, tells him that she, their three children, and her mother are quite happy and that it is he alone who is unhappy. He'll not find happiness in California because his unhappiness will follow him, she argues. Nevertheless, he sets up several interviews at California hospitals. He meets Benjamin, an elderly Yankee farmer, who quickly diagnoses Dr. Vaughan's problem. The doctor tells Benjamin about all the "garbage" he has to put up with at his hospital. Benjamin asks probing questions and concludes that Don is collecting other people's trash. It accumulates and turns to garbage. Benjamin offers to teach Don how to identify the trash and how not to collect it, but Don refuses until he meets and becomes smitten with Felicity, Benjamin's young coquettish caregiver who is also troubled and under Benjamin's tutelage. He agrees to subject himself to Benjamin's teaching sessions where he becomes involved with Felicity who proves to be an undisciplined temptress. As Don battles some of the medical staff while aligning himself with others, Marion Goss, a board member, tells him that she and a few others are planning to stack the board and that she would like to nominate him. He is offered a position in California and is torn between moving to a new hospital or remaining in his own hospital and engaging in hospital politics. Formerly an affable family man, Don had become a stuffed shirt suffering an undiagnosed sub-clinical depression. In concert, Benjamin and Marion unstuff his shirt, but not before he had done battle with his peers, became sexually robotic with his wife, and lusted for Felicity. Benjamin's teachings permitted Don to solve his problems. They did not help Felicity. Her problems are to be addressed in a coming novel.
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