Thirty-seven-year-old Tamara Wolfe married her childhood sweetheart, Robert, right out of high school and proceeded to have a passel of children who fill her life to capacity. With the last of her children in preschool, Tamara decides to make a business out of her long-time love of creating designer gift baskets. She doesn't expect Robert to be against it from her first word. Robert has always prided himself on giving Tamara the option of staying home to raise the children, just as his father did before him. Since birth, it's been drilled into him that a man who doesn't provide for his family is the worst kind of loser. Although they'd agreed years before their family was complete, Robert considers that perhaps the cure for Tamara's restlessness is another baby. All Tamara wants is a small space of time for herself. Is she being selfish? Or is God leading her to continue being an outdated model of the Proverbs 31 wife--submissive, but never equal?

All good things must come to an end, but bad things continue forever? Vashti Samuels, Rozlyn Gosnik, and Justice Adams grew up together as the children of lawyers in Peaceful, Wisconsin. The three were best friends all their lives. Never once did Vashti realize Roz felt only jealousy and animosity for her. When the truth came out their friendship fractured, and Vashti couldn't make things right no matter how hard she tried. Meanwhile, Justice and Roz began a stormy relationship that segued into a volatile marriage. Years later, Justice ends up in the hospital after Roz commits suicide and nearly extinguished his life in the process. He makes it clear Vashti is the last person he wants to hold his hand during his convalescence and grief. His life has always been spent in the middle between Roz and Vashti and, even with Roz's death, he's not free. Vashti insists she only wants to be friends again, but deep down she knows if she can't have his heart she'd rather have nothing at all.

At the age of fifteen, Chad Feldmann and Winnie McBride made an impulsive choice that led to pregnancy. Now, years later, they're married. But all is not well in paradise. As much as Winnie loves her daughter, she can't forget the life she'd expected to be living. Until they got married, it'd seemed to her they were both struggling and making sacrifices to move forward. After the wedding, she can't see that Chad is doing his part anymore. The more he makes his own dreams come true, the more her resentment grows. Chad blames himself for the reckless choice made when he and Winnie were kids. All he wants now is to build a life with Winnie, but he knows she isn't happy, knows she's pulling further from him, and he can't figure out how to stop the inevitable. They've done everything backwards-the baby carriage, then marriage-and somehow he has to remind her that, regardless of all the wrongs committed, one thing has been true for him for as long as he can remember: First came love.

Detached and ignored for most of her life, Brayla Sullivan is the awkward, ugly duckling destined for spinsterhood who's never been kissed, never gone anywhere beyond the small town she was born and raised in. When she starts corresponding with a man from a ""Meet Exotic Singles"" website and he suggests they meet, she drops everything to fly to him in a last-ditch effort to find her happily-ever-after. The only son in a family of daughters, Shaun Levi, Peaceful's Chief of Police, has never looked the part of a dashing hero. Brayla has been nothing more than a buddy he's known all his life. But, when a kiss between them on New Year's takes a turn for the what-have-we-done?, he sees a side to his old friend he never anticipated?and the consequences may just leave him without a friend or a prayer of convincing her they could share so much more. What follows is a series of unfortunate events in which everything goes wrong?