Christmas in Connecticut

Featured in Smart Housekeeping magazine, domestic goddess Elizabeth Lane's column, which focuses primarily on food and which is the most popular column of its kind in the country, is an account of her perfect domestic life as wife and new mother living on a rural Connecticut property. However, it is all a sham as Liz is single, lives in a small New York City apartment, and doesn't know how to cook, she using her Uncle Fritz Bassenak, a chef and restaurateur, as her source for the food items, and her long time suitor, architect John Sloan, who owns a Connecticut farm, as the source of the stories of rural Connecticut life. A problem arises for Liz and by association her editor, Dudley Beecham, who knows the truth about Liz, when their publisher, Alexander Yardley, who values truth above all else, asks Liz to host a Connecticut Christmas dinner for himself and war hero Jefferson Jones. Jeff is one of the few survivors of a bombed destroyer. Spending eighteen days on a life raft, he dreamed more about good food than anything during those eighteen days. His naval hospital nurse, Mary Lee, who he feigned to love just to get that food against doctor's orders, believes that Jeff, who has never had a supportive home life, has to experience such to get him to marry her, which resulted in the request to Liz via Yardley. It isn't until after Liz agrees to marry John, who she does not love but can no longer use the excuse of her flourishing writing career not to marry as she is sure Yardley will fire her once he knows the truth, that Dudley comes up with the idea to use John's Connecticut house and Felix's behind the scenes cooking prowess to host that Christmas dinner in Connecticut, complete with a borrowed baby. All the parties in the know agree. Complications ensue when Liz, John and Felix try to keep the truth from Jeff and Yardley, that truth which includes Judge Crowthers, who is to officiate Liz and John's wedding and who they have to hide physically whenever he is at the farm in order to marry them. But the biggest complication is that Liz and Jeff fall in love at first sight, Jeff whose love may wane if he learns that Liz is not all she appears on the surface.