College student David Rain rents a room in an unusual boardinghouse full of clay dragons, not realizing that they, along with some lively squirrels, will help jumpstart his writing career.

In 1934, during the Depression, Kit's cantankerous uncle comes to live in the Cincinnati boardinghouse run by her parents, enlisting her aid in transcribing his complaining letters to the editor of the local newspaper and inspiring her to write a different kind of letter of her own.