In August 1945 JACK VANBORN and HUGH STANFIELD have a date for a bloodbath: the invasion of Japan. En route their reservation is cancelled by the atomic bombs that end WWII. Awaiting repatriation, physician aspirant Stanfield gains an introduction to medicine. VanBorn is discharged in Manila, narrowly escapes assassination and seizes a share of the postwar construction boom. Back in the U.S. VanBorn, becomes a real estate developer. Stanfield attends medical school and becomes an eye surgeon. They are reunited during a ski holiday in snowbound Aspen, Colorado, when VanBorn's daughter sustains a fearful eye injury. In this dramatic setting Stanfield performs a corneal transplant. VanBorn's gratitude knows no bounds. He builds a surgical operating microscope for Stanfield, who utilizes it on his way to national renown. The theme of the story is the cost and sacrifice of unrelenting ambition. It plays out in part in the 'Valley of the Millionaires," a magical place in Colorado where the tender love affair between Stanfield and his wife SUSAN is born and where they examine the endangered future of their marriage. VanBorn's wife, ALLISON, is a brilliant pediatrician who ultimately pays the cost of VanBorn's ascent to success.