Jake Jacobson is a fiftysomething widower who has spent the last year trying to get over his wife's death. He turns to his work in the construction industry and to his newly adopted dog, Butch, to distract him from his grief-and from the nagging sense that there had been a void even before his wife had died.

At the tail end of a fishing trip, Jake and Butch are near a beach when they see a woman being chased through a parking lot by two young men, one of whom is carrying a gun. Jake comes to her rescue-and that's how he meets Beth Goodwyne. Beth is also a widow, and it seems the men...