With her mother gone and her father out of her life, when Annie Culligan loses her Grandma Emma, she loses her entire family. With nothing to hold her in tiny Mt. Gilead, Ohio, she heads west to Nevada City, California, with her grandmother's worn leather suitcase and fresh new teaching credentials in hand. Renting a room from a gentle widow, she ventures into a new life and finds friendship and a feeling of family that she thought she'd lost.

As a first-year science teacher, Annie gives much more to her students than an education-she gives them acceptance and respect. Even as her...