Grace Ranker experiences the worst of tragedies and faces many obstacles during a slow and painful recovery. She discovers the challenges that a woman confronts in a man's sport in the late 1960s but receives support from another source that enables her to retain hope for what seems a dismal future.
Luke Ranker is in Vietnam when he learns of his dad's sudden death. He returns to Texas, suffering from the horror and death he has viewed the last two years. He had been a platoon leader guiding two dozen marines and had lost five of them in combat. The guilt over these five, especially a boy from Louisiana, haunts him and alters his outlook on life. Luke left home a boy who always smiled and joked and returned a young man who was miserable and angry about a war which no one seemed to understand.
Jimmie Lyn Waddell was twenty-three years old and was finally about to marry. She had found her dream guy who was taller than her six feet and thirty years old. She had always been obsessed with her height and had a poor self-image of herself before meeting Drake Davis who was six-feet-five inches. He was everything and more than she had ever imagined. They had already set a marriage date and everything seemed to be perfect until . . .
