Clara Mattingly, who is serving a life sentence in a women's prison, allows herself no hope for a better future. But when a surprise visitor shows up one day, she finds that in an instant everything has changed. Now she must account for the life she has led --- its beauty as well as its brutality --- and face the truth behind the terrible secret she has kept to herself all these years.

Alone since her mother's death, Jill Wagner wants to eat, sleep and breathe Cade Olmstead when the golden, handsome and ambitious man bursts upon her life. Even putting college on hold feels like a minor sacrifice when she discovers she's pregnant with Cade's baby. But it won't be the last sacrifice she'll have to make.

16-year-old Zach Patterson, uprooted and struggling to reconcile his knowledge of his mother's extramarital affair, and Judy McFarland, a kindergarten teacher watching her family unravel before her eyes, are thrown together to organize a fundraiser for their failing private school. Bonded by loneliness, they begin an affair that at first thrills, then corrupts each of them.