Search for Tomorrow was centered on a Midwestern housewife named Joanne Gardner, who lived in a fictional town called Henderson. In the earlier years, Joanne's friends and next-door neighbors, Stuart and Marge Bergman received much screen time as they commiserated with Joanne, usually over a cup of coffee at the kitchen table.

Most of Joanne's dilemmas in the early years were due to her dead husband Keith Barron's overbearing parents – they (most especially her mother in-law, Irene) never liked her and were quite content with seizing Joanne and Keith's daughter Patti from the widow.

The majority of the show's 35 year run was on CBS as a 15 minute series sponsored by Proctor & Gamble. In 1982, the series moved to NBC in an attempt to reinvigorate the show's ratings. This failed and the series concluded in 1986.