"No one steps up to life's banquet, holds out her tray, and orders, "Grief, please!" Yet as a child, Candy Pekkala was served a heaping helping of it. But every buffet line has a dessert section, and when a cousin calls with a Hollywood apartment to sublet, it seems though Candy is finally offered something sweet. It's good-bye to Minnesota and hello to California, where a girl who has always lived by her wits has a real chance of making a living...

Set adrift when her mother sells the salon that has been a neighborhood institution for decades, Nora Rolvaag takes a camping trip, intending to do nothing more than roast marshmallows over an open fire and under a starry sky. Two chance encounters, however, will have enormous consequences, and her getaway turns out to be more of a retreat from her daily life than she ever imagined. But Nora is the do-or-die-trying daughter of Patty Jane, who now...

Joe Andreson transfers to a Minneapolis high school in his senior year and hooks up with Kristi Casey; however, after graduation, Joe, who can't quite get over Kristi, becomes a grocer while Kristi becomes a radio-televangelist bound for greater things.