No More Saturday Nights is set in Haysburg, a small town in Massachusetts, and New York City in and around Columbia University. It begins in Haysburg, where Tim's father teaches mathematics at Taylor College, a small woman's college. Tim has grown up in Haysburg, living alone with his father after his mother's death when Tim was twelve. Thus, the move to New York City to attend Columbia is a drastic one for Tim. He must adjust to being a college student at a demanding university, living in a big city, and being a single father trying to raise a baby without help from his family. The book begins three months before Tim's graduation from high school and ends during Christmas vacation shortly before the end of his first semester in college.

After his wife died, Abner became extremely silent and taciturn, in many ways neglecting his son. The...