In 1934, April Asbury moves to Fertile, Missouri, to work as nurse to the small-town doctor there, Doc Forbes. She's happy to leave the big city behind and move to a place where everyone knows everyone. What she doesn't expect is that, as the prettiest new thing to hit Fertile in quite some time, she'll have men lining up outside the Doc's office to take her out.

It's the first guy she meets in town, Joe Jones, who keeps her interest, but she can tell he's a heartbreaker and she's determined not to go that route. Joe just can't help himself -- he flirts with any woman around.

This book is rife with plotlines -- there's Doc, who's in love with a woman with a smidgen of colored blood in her that would cost him his license if anyone found out; there's the widow who owns the hardware store who found out her husband had been a rapist and who's wanting revenge on all the children he fathered outside their marriage; there's Joe's brother, Jack, who has, to all intents and purposes, lost the love of his life, Ruby May.

I both loved and was disappointed in this book. I loved the people of Fertile, they're idiosyncrasies, their loves, their devotion to small-town and family. Joe and April are terrific characters and the dialogue was sharp. But there were too many plots packed in here and at the end, I felt as if they didn't come to fruition. The evil widow alone could have had her own book, and the whole issue of race in the early 1900s could have had another. Doc's story I did think was fulfilled, as was the love of Joe and April. But the widow's ending was a definite let-down. Maybe it comes from reading too many modern bloody mysteries, but I really thought there would be more there. That said, I still recommend this book. What a great slice of Americana -- I felt that I was living in Fertile, entwined in all the gossip and caring and annoyance of a small town.