The intense friendship shared by two Black women raised in an Ohio town changes when one of them leaves to roam the countryside and returns ten years later. The rich and moving novel traces the lives of two black heroines--from their growing up together in a small Ohio town, through their sharply divergent paths of womanhood, to their ultimate confrontation and reconciliation.

Stranded on an uninhabited island after their private plane crashes, thirty-year-old Anna Emerson and sixteen-year-old T.J. Callahan, her tutee, struggle to survive and, as the months pass, slowly fall in love.