The Winter Room is a portrait of idyllic rural life. Its focus is a Minnesota family of six: a husband and wife, their two sons, and two bachelor relatives.

Although few dramatic events happen to this family, the book is one of Paulsen's most distinctive and original novels.

The novel has three parts that are interrelated by mood and theme rather than plot. The book opens with a short section entitled "Tuning," a lyric prose poem on the power of books as imaginative experience. The second section is composed of four chapters. Each one paints a portrait of one of the seasons of the year. Arranged like movements in a symphony, these chapters explore how each season brings its characteristic activities to the farm and creates its special feelings in the family. The year described is not a particular year but every year's common and inevitable happenings.

The third section has another four chapters. They are stories told by an uncle as the narrator recalls them. The last one inadvertently leads to the climactic crisis of the novel, a silent schism between the uncle and his nephews. The confrontation is a moment of truth for both sides: the boys learn a secret about adulthood, and their uncle reverses for a moment the irresistible march of time.