The year is 1931 and Lucy Richards Arnold -- now a mother of a precocious four-year-old son -- is in rural West Texas, teaching in the school where her husband. Josh, is principal and struggling to make a success of their farm during the bleak, hard times of the Great Depression. Out of this barren landscape, rich and colorful characters emerge as if from a fertile land. Before the year's end, Lucy is faced with a loss of such magnitude that she must struggle to find a way to recapture the joy in her very existence.