After waiting for six weeks and hearing no word of his novel, John-Boy travels to Hastings House in New York to try to track down his lost novel. In actual fact it is not lost, but is just waiting in a huge pile for the publisher to read. The trip ends up becoming the turning point in both his personal and professional life. He returns to Waltons Mountain with the news that his book is going to be published and that he has been commissioned to write another. However he feels that the time is right for him to move from the family home to New York. This episode has many flashbacks as John Boy relates to the editor just how he came to write his book and explains a bit about his family.