Theodora Lynn (Irene Dunne) is a Sunday school teacher and former church organist in Lynnfield, Connecticut, raised by two spinster aunts, Mary (Elisabeth Risdon) and Elsie Lynn (Margaret McWade). She also happens to be, under the pen name Caroline Adams, the secret author of a bestselling book that has the straight-laced Lynnfield Literary Circle in an uproar. The book is Serial (literature) in the local newspaper, and the Literary Circle, led by outraged busybody Rebecca Perry (Spring Byington), forces the newspaper's owner Jed Waterbury (Thomas Mitchell (actor)) to stop printing the salacious installments.