The time is the early 1980s. Judith Plant and her new partner, Kip, are ready for a change. Inspired by the charismatic Fred Brown, their communications professor at Simon Fraser University, they join a commune in a remote valley near the Yalakom River, deep in BC's Coast Mountains. Culture Gap: Towards a New World in the Yalakom Valley tells the story of that sojourn. The challenges and privations, the joys and adventures of rural communal living, form the backdrop to the human drama the author recounts. Judith and Kip's family includes her children; Willie takes to the new life, but his sisters feel the strong pull of the life they left behind. Meanwhile Fred, the inspiration for the commune, stricken with cancer, is dying.