Moving from Mexico to America when their daughter suffers a near-fatal accident, the Riveras confront cultural barriers, their daughter's difficult recovery and her developing relationship with a Panamanian boy.

They meet at a local tavern in the small town of Belleville, Delaware. Polly is set on heading west. Adam says he's also passing through. Yet she stays, and he stays -- drawn to this mysterious redhead whose quiet stillness both unnerves and excites him. Over the course of a punishing summer, Polly and Adam abandon themselves to a steamy, inexorable affair. Still, each holds something back from the other -- dangerous, even lethal secrets. Then someone...

"In the last two years, English professor Ellen Tolliver has weathered heartache with grace--including an unwelcome divorce and losing her parents. In her more honest moments, Ellen might admit that she's sick of loss. She longs to stretch and grow, to truly fill her days. Maybe this year, she'll have something to recount in her Christmas letter other than her son's travel adventures. Maybe she'll be too busy to even write a Christmas letter. On impulse,...