Katey Snow slips the pickup into neutral and rolls silently out of the driveway of her Vermont home; her parents, Oliver and Ruth, still asleep. She isn't so much running away as on a journey of discovery, carrying a packet of letters addressed to her mother from an old army buddy of her father's. She has only recently been told that Oliver, who she adores more than anyone, isn't her biological father. Through Ruth's recollections, we learn of her courtship with Oliver, their marriage on the eve of war, and his return as a changed man.