A tender ribald story about relationships, The Results of Polar Bear Research takes the reader to Lake Summit in the mountains of North Carolina, where college students spend the day water-skiing and the evening socializing. John Dawes secretly rues the day he has to graduate from college and enter the adult word. To John, adulthood is a wilderness of blowhards and judgmental hypocrites. The little insight he possesses, he gleans from nature and architecture, his favorite subjects.

Harriet Smiley whom everyone calls "Harry" seems to be a wish come true for John. She charms him with large vulnerable, dark-green eyes and a trembling voice, the very picture of innocence. Their relationship will teach him something he could never learn from a textbook only children have real innocence. In someone his age, it's probably something else.