On a June day, a young woman in a summer dress steps off a Chicago-bound bus into a small midwestern town. she doesn't intend to stay. She is just passing through. yet her stopping here has a reason, and it is part of a story you will never forget. The time is the 1950s, when life was simpler, people still believed in dreams, and family was, very nearly, everything. The place is a small midwestern town with a high school and a downtown, a skating pond and a movie house. And on a tree-lined street in the heartland of America, an extraordinary set of events begins to unfold. And gradually what seems serendipitous is tinged with purpose. A happy home is shattered by a child's senseless death. A loving marriage starts to unravel. And a stranger arrives - a young woman who will touch many lives before she moves on. She and a young man will meet and fall in love. their love,so innocent and full of hope, helps to restore a family's dreams: And all of their lives will be changed forever by the precious gift she leaves them.--Inside front cover