Abandoning her homeless existence to become a minister's wife, Lila reflects on her hardscrabble life on the run with a canny young drifter and her efforts to reconcile her painful past with her husband's gentle Christian worldview.

Sarah Quinlan's husband, Jack, has been haunted for decades by the untimely death of his mother when he was just a teenager. Her body was found in the cellar of their family farm, the circumstances a mystery. The case rocked the small farm town of Penny Gate, Iowa, where Jack was raised, and for years Jack avoided returning home. But when his beloved aunt Julia is in an accident, hospitalized in a coma, Jack and Sarah are forced to confront the past...

As ten-year-old Gwyn searches for a missing neighbor in her new town in Iowa, she learns much about her mother, who grew up there but has suffered from memory loss since Gwyn was four.

The International Bestseller Once you let a book into your life, the most unexpected things can happen... Broken Wheel, Iowa, has never seen anyone like Sara, who traveled all the way from Sweden just to meet her book-loving pen pal. When she arrives, however, she finds Amy's funeral guests just leaving. The residents of Broken Wheel are happy to look after their bewildered visitor - not much else to do in a small town that's almost beyond repair....

Inspired by a mysterious voice, Iowa farmer Ray Kinsella constructs a baseball diamond in the middle of his cornfield.

Silver-tongued con artist Harold Hill hoodwinks the stubborn townsfolk of River City, Iowa into buying instruments and uniforms for a boy's band, but his game ultimately and romantically backfires.