"It's the dawn of the twentieth century, post-Reconstruction, in the Commonwealth of Virginia. From the ancestral blood and sweat of its settlers--the immigrants, the slaves, the Cherokee--a new generation strives for prosperity in the united township of Grafton. Across the unfolding decades, childhood friends, mothers and daughters, wives and lovers will have their bonds tested. New hopes and dreams lie beyond the river, and as allegiances are challenged, a harmonious community finds itself grappling with inevitable cultural change--change that creates a vast, opportune, and unpredictable new beginning for generations yet to come."--Page 4 of cover