A family promise and a lack of lady-like qualities have kept Merrill Krause single. When a chance at love appears, can she overcome the challenges?

Emmalyne Knox and Tavin MacLachlan were destined to be together...until the tragic deaths of Emmalyne's youngest sisters. Family tradition mandates that the youngest daughter should remain single to care for her parents in their old age, and now that daughter is Emmalyne. Her father unyielding, Emmalyne surrenders to her duty, heartbroken. Tavin leaves town, equally devastated. Years later, Emmalyne's family moves, and she and Tavin meet again. Their...

Mariel Prager needs a break. Her husband Ned is having an identity crisis, her spunky, beloved restaurant is bleeding money by the day, and her mother Florence is stubbornly refusing to leave the church where she's been holed up for more than a week. The Lakeside Supper Club has been in her family for decades, and while Mariel's grandmother embraced the business, seeing it as a saving grace, Florence never took to it. When Mariel inherited the restaurant,...

Portrait of a family struggling quietly with a crisis. Willie is a compulsive gambler and disregards his wife Arlene's plea for a house. They live together in a small backroom of the depot where Willie works, and have one six-year-old daughter, Lark. Since Willie can't save any money, Arlene decides to start her own typing business. She and Lark dream of the day they can buy the Cape Ann house they've chosen from a house catalog. Willie's gambling...

It is 1938 when Eveline, a young bride, follows her husband into the wilderness of Minnesota. Though their cabin is rundown, they have a river full of fish, a garden out back, and a new baby boy named Hux. But when Emil leaves to take care of his sick father, the unthinkable happens: a stranger arrives, and Eveline becomes pregnant. She gives the child away, and while Hux grows up hunting and fishing in the woods with his parents, his sister, Naamah,...

When the high school cheerleading team takes over a soda vending machine's funds, which were previously collected by the pep band, Gabe Johnson, an overweight "band geek" tired of being called names and looked down on, declares war.

High school principal Tom Gardner feels a sense of shock when he sees Kent Arens, a new transfer student. With one glance, Tom sees that this teenager is the son he never knew he had-the result of a one-night stand on the eve of his wedding years before, now grown into an intelligent, athletic, and polite young man. But the boy's presence has a devastating effect on Tom's family.