Phoebe Fox is desperately unhappy when she flunks her audition at the School of American Ballet in New York, but agrees to help her great-aunt Weezy drive from Santa Fe to Denver. When they stop at a hot springs resort she meets Cody Moon, a blue-eyed charmer who works there, and they fall deeply in love and share five blissful days. But Cody has a sister, Wynonna, who raised him and has no intention of giving him up. Phoebe realizes it's hopeless, and as they continue on to Denver, Weezy tells her of her own lost love during World War Two with a young soldier named Mickey McGuire, and why she's still haunted by the fact that she never knew what happened to him. Was he killed in action, or caught and tortured by the Nazis? In Denver they meet Franny, Phoebe's older sister, who has left her doctor husband and is living with a cook, with whom she's just had a baby. They also spend time with Weezy's older sister, Jenna, who resents the fact that her once poor-as-a-church-mouse baby sister is now a woman of means, and in the course of time a long-kept family secret is finally revealed. Also a mysterious white rose found on her pillow brings Weezy an unexpected peace, and on the ride home they run into Cody again. A mesmerizing tale of two loves, two generations apart, yet eerily similar in their hopes and intensity.