It’s the summer of 1939, and the Great Depression lingers in rural Georgia. Nineteen-year-old Ginny Neely plans to marry a handsome Georgia State Trooper and start a family of her own. But her father’s sudden death and the loss of their farm take a heavy toll on her dreams. Disillusioned with her fiancé and facing worsening poverty , she breaks her engagement and follows her elder brother to Savannah, where they find work to support their widowed mother and younger siblings. Then the U.S. enters World War II, upending Ginny’s life again. Even as she struggles to keep her family out of financial ruin and to find care for her desperately ill sister, she falls in love with an Army pilot and then loses touch with him when he goes to war. As war rages and ultimately changes the world in a myriad of unforeseen ways, Ginny begins to question the society she grew up in, especially its restrictions based on race and gender. This puts her increasingly at odds with her family and adds to the aching loneliness of her life. Will her segregationist family cast her out? Has her husband become a casualty of war? Having endured so much loss and heartbreak, Ginny realizes that the worst may yet lie ahead.