Two brothers work a rich and bountiful land--and one extraordinary woman shares their lives. To Jonathan Gray, Mary is a devoted and giving mate. To Aaron, she is a beloved friend. But seven childless years of marriage have forced Jonathan to ask the unthinkable of his brother and his wife--binding the two people he cares for most with an act of desire born of compassion ... awakening Mary to the pain of infidelity, and to all the bittersweet joy...

In the summer of 1965, teenager Paul Sutton, a northern Minnesota farm boy, takes a job at a gas station in town, where his strict religious upbringing is challenged by new people and experiences.

Jerry Macmillan has returned on leave from the war, but doesn't know if he will receive the special discharge he requested. If he doesn't get it, his ailing father will lose the farm, and his wife and daughter will have no place to go.

Marjie Livingstone and Jerry Macmillan are married two days before Jerry leaves for the navy at the beginning of World War II. They must hang on to their hopes in this time of separation and danger.

With his father in jail and his mother working full-time, fourteen-year-old Billy Baggs finds himself in charge of running the family farm in northern Minnesota and having to give up the thing he loves most--baseball.

Since the death of his older brother, thirteen-year-old Billy Baggs has had a distant relationship with his father, but life on their farm in northern Minnesota begins to change when he starts to play baseball.