This is a love story takes place in the Upper Ohio Valley in the 1960s when two seemingly permanent forces—the steel industry and tuition free parochial schools run by Catholic nuns—were at their zeniths. As those pillars started to crumble and fall away Jack Clark and Laurie Carmine come of age and step of their broad shoulders and into the American mainstream.

As Jack Clark and Laurie Carmine spent years searching for their separate futures, they were also stumbling toward love, but unexpected events provide seemingly insurmountable headwinds. Although the life that supported their youth is falling away, the values instilled in them prepared them to participate fully in the American mainstream, either together or apart.