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 LaVyrle Spencer writes with special insight about the provincial life of her hometown, Browerville, Minnesota. The story opens with the death of a vibrant and beneficient young wife and mother, Krystyna, at a railroad corssing in rural Minnesota. Nearly every person growing up in a rural community can relate to the untimely passing of one as special as Krystyna. In this case the whole Catholic community goes into mourning.
Krystyna leaves behind four special people whose lives are destined to come together because of her death. They are Eddie Olczack, Krystyna's husband, her daughters, Anne and Lucy, and the childrens' teacher, Sister Regina of the St. Joseph's Parochial Catholic School that served children in the communities surrounding Browerville in the 1950's.
The characters convince the reader that life as a Polish merchant or farmer is rewarding in its routine. As the trusted and dependent janitor at St. Joseph's, Eddie finds how little he knows about monastery life and the vows and education that separate him from the priests and nuns and their monasticy and celibacy.
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