All her life she had recited the Twenty-Third Psalm, yet now, when it counted most, the truth seemed to elude her. Instead of comfort, she felt that her soul had been beaten with a rod and staff." The lives of three different families are woven into this story of faith. One side of the scales is heavily weighted with sorrow: fractured relationships, the death of a daughter, a house fire, an uninvited relative, guilt over things lost, and wayward children. The other side, however, bears the sure, solid counterbalance of forgiveness and grace, courage and restoration, faith and hope. From a letter to the author, a reader in Minnesota wrote: "I have never read anything that made me really know the characters as you did. . . . It was amazing-even down to little Samuel searching through the pockets on wash day.