From 1940 to 1941, WH Auden and Benjamin Britten shared a house in Brooklyn with Paul and Jane Bowles, Carson McCullers and Gypsy Rose Lee, among others. The house was established as an artistic and intellectual community, and Tippins brings to life the rise and fall of the group, exploring the role of art in the first years of World War II as these creative geniuses struggled with the conflict of what to do with so much creativity when the world was so close to chaos.