With nothing but brains, ambition, and sheer nerve, Charlotte Hale built a career as a tough, do-anything-to-succeed real estate developer. She's at the top of that mountain - but her life is empty. Her friends are as grasping and insincere as she has become. Far worse, she's alienated her family so completely that she's totally lost touch with her only daughter. One terrifying day, facing her own mortality, she realizes that her ambition has almost destroyed her chance at happiness.

Sam Kinkade is finally feeling at home as a minister in rural Toms Brook, Virginia, content with his life and Shenandoah Valley congregation. But his plans to welcome the area's growing Hispanic community are being met with resistance. Fortunately, when the church-run community center is threatened, a stranger named Elisa Martinez walks through his door and Sam realizes he has found a woman capable of building bridges. Elisa isn't looking to make connections. She has come to Toms Brook to hide.

In a cave in the Shenandoah National Park, two bodies are discovered, wrapped in the tattered remains of a lover's knot quilt. In Washington, D.C., Isaac Taylor inherits a nearly identical quilt from a grandmother whose name he never even knew. After narrowly escaping death, newspaper journalist Kendra Taylor retreats to a cabin nestled in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley to heal and sort out her feelings about her troubled marriage.

Gayle Fortman has built a good life for herself and her three sons as an innkeeper in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley. She has even maintained a cordial relationship with her ex, charismatic broadcast journalist Eric Fortman, covering with the boys for his absences and broken promises. Luckily Travis Allen, her closest neighbor, has been a loving surrogate father to the boys and her own best friend. Then, on the eve of oldest son Jared's graduation, Eric returns, having nearly lost his life in Afghanistan.

It’s been a year since Hannah’s husband, Brian, lost his battle with cancer, just days before his 30th birthday. Over and over again, Hannah has been told it’s time to move on. Trouble is, she’s not sure how. When her company downsizes and Hannah finds herself out of work, she moves back home to GraceTown, Maryland. Hannah isn’t sure exactly what she’s hoping to find in GraceTown, but a mysterious pink house no one but her has ever seen isn’t it. Nor does she expect the woman living in the house—someone unknown yet still familiar to Hannah--to present her with a gift.