Becky Slater and her husband have purchased a burnt-out old farmhouse in a small Vermont town, where they plan to rebuild and make a new life for themselves. Before they get very far, however, Rob Slater announces he’s in love with another woman and leaves. Now alone, living in a trailer on a back road, Becky knows only the dairy-farming O'Connor family and Hayden Flynn, the quiet young handyman from a frighteningly dysfunctional family down the road. Her friendship with the O'Connors--brothers Dean and Chip and their wives, Greer and Lauren--becomes central to her future, especially as she seeks to sort out her relationship with Hayden, who both fascinates and frightens her. As the truth about the O'Connors begins to unfold, however, Becky finds herself fluctuating between being the counseled and the counselor. Dean and Greer have held on to a rocky marriage complicated by childlessness and Dean's post-Vietnam depression, but their trials have just begun. An unexpected pregnancy changes everyone's lives and threatens the survival of this otherwise closely knit farming family. For Becky, the startling revelations only reaffirm her doubts about commitment and fidelity, sending her down a road from which it will be difficult to return.
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