When tragedy strikes, forcing them down separate paths in 1967 Iowa, former nursing school roommates, against all odds, form a decades-long friendship that sees them through life's trials and tribulations until one snowy night leads their relationship to the ultimate crossroads.

"A new Gilead novel that tells the story of John Ames Boughton, the beloved, erratic, and grieved-over prodigal son of a Presbyterian minister from Gilead, Iowa"--

An epic novel that spans thirty years in the lives of a farm family in Iowa, telling a parallel story of the changes taking place in America from 1920 through the early 1950s.