In the summer of 1957, two writers are immersed in their craft at an artist's colony nestled in upstate New York when chance brings them together. Frances, a country northerner, as committed to her solitude as she is her faith, and Bernard, a gregarious Bostonian with a propensity towards mania and grand gestures, find themselves forming a friendship, and then a courtship, as they each discover a kindred spirit beneath the obvious differences between them. But, as they become inexorably entwined in each other's lives, they struggle with the dependence of their romance and the conflict it causes with their own dreams. Inspired by the lives of Flannery O'Connor and Robert Lowell, who formed an unlikely connection after meeting at Yaddo in the late fifties, and told in a series of intimate letters between the protagonists, Francis and Bernard is a touching and bittersweet look at what happens when love, desire, hope, faith, and friendship collide.