Trudi Sheppard returns to her home in a small West Virginia town to see what arrangements must be made for her mother who is experiencing symptoms of Alzheimer's. Wynn Colton who was the boy next door and now Chief of Surgery at metropolitan Pittsburgh medical center has come home to help prepare his father's house—his boyhood home—for sale. Trudi and Wynn were childhood playmates, then high school sweethearts who became lovers. It all ended when each went their own way—Wynn to medical school in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and Trudi to nursing school in Atlanta, Georgia.

Now, thirty years later, Trudi is the divorced mother of two adult daughters; Wynn is widowed and the father of a grown son. Circumstances bring Trudi and Wynn back home at the same time where they meet once again in their sacred childhood spot—under The Promise Tree. (Second Edition, first published in 2012.)