BOARDINGHOUSE STEW is set in a seedy, down-at-heel boardinghouse in Sacramento, California in 1943. Due to an acute labor shortage caused by the evacuation of all Japanese from the area, as well as many domestic workers preferring war work to house work, the proprietress is forced to hire a young schoolgirl named Eileen as maid and cook for the summer. Through one crisis after another -- some more comic than tragic -- the people who live in the house manage to pull together and become a kind of family. In the center of it all is Eileen, narrating their stories which she is able to observe from her unique vantage point behind the swinging kitchen door that never quite closes on its rusty hinges.