Robert Benton

A retired detective accepts a simple task, unaware that it will tear open old, forgotten, but deadly wounds.

In north Texas in the 1930s, a widow with two small children tries to save her small 40-acre farm with the help of a blind boarder and an itinerant black handyman.

After his wife leaves him, a work-obsessed Manhattan advertising executive is forced to learn long-neglected parenting skills, but a heated custody battle over the couple's young son deepens the wounds left by the separation.

A rustic Oregon town is the backdrop for this tale of men and women touched by love's inescapable spell. From Bradley, the hopeless romantic who looks for love in all the wrong places; to Harry, a local professor with the wisdom and experience to guide those close to him; to young, beautiful Chloe, who defies fate in romancing the troubled Oscar.

When a disgraced former college dean has a romance with a mysterious younger woman haunted by her dark, twisted past, he is forced to confront a shocking fact about his own life that he has kept secret for fifty years.