Emmons, Sherri Wood

Corrie Philips' enviable life--working for her university's alumni magazine and being married to an attentive, wealthy husband--is called into question by her desperate desire for a child and her attraction to the boyfriend who returns after a decade's absence.

The summer that her father falls in love with Emma, Jenny Bohner is just turning eleven, Jenny was three when her mother died, and since then Brannon Bohner has traveled with his daughter from one seasonal job to another, picking up girlfriends along the way. Somehow Emma is different, traveling with them from Idaho to Kentucky, filling Jenny with hopes of a real family. But something still troubles her, surfacing through years of memories--tempting her from within boxes Jenny has been told never to touch, filled with hidden mementos from long ago. Inside Jenny will find answers that will compel her to face the hard truth that she no longer can ignore.

Judy Webster is raised by a flower-child mother Cassie and her husband Kirk. He gradually abandons the '60s ideals and enters the legal field and eventually files for divorce and gets custody of his daughter. As Judy grows up, she and Cassie must decide how to be a part of each others' lives.

When seven-year-old Bethany first meets six-year-old cousin Reana Mae during a yearly family trip to West Virginia's Coal River Valley, it's the beginning of a kinship of misfits that saves both from a bone-deep loneliness. But as Bethany grows older, secrets in the small, close-knit community start coming to light with devastating effect.