Central Kansas Library System

While helping to restore the family home in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley, Tessa MacCrae reevaluates her marriage and discovers an old wedding-ring quilt that holds the key to forgiveness, hope, and healing.

The small town of Pacashau, Georgia, has fallen on hard times, but the people are counting on the Divinity Church Choir to lift their spirits by winning the National Joyful Noise Competition. The discord between its two leading ladies threatens to tear them apart. Their newly appointed director, Vi Rose Hill, stubbornly wants to stick with their tried-and-true traditional style, G.G. Sparrow thinks tried-and-true translates to tired-and-old.

Bill, a wealthy businessman, confronts his junkie daughter's drug-dealing boyfriend and in the ensuing argument kills him. Panic-stricken, he wanders the streets and eventually stops at a bar. There he runs into a drunken factory worker named Joe, who hates hippies, blacks, and anyone who is "different", and would like to kill one himself. The two start talking, and Bill reveals his secret to Joe.