In the gentle tradition of James Herriot, Bailey White, Ferrol Sams, and Garrison Keillor, Karon continues the fresh and beautifully written story of a small mountain town in the South. The village rector, Father Tim, can no longer deny his feeling for his neighbor. But what about the wealthy widow who has been wooing him with casseroles? It's clear that Father Tim is in need of divine intervention.

"On the day of the historic 1945 Jewel Voice Broadcast, in which Emperor Hirohito announced Japan's surrender to the Allied forces, bringing an end to World War II, three men, flush with jubilation, made a pact. After their deaths, each year on the anniversary of the broadcast, their souls would return to the Chinese village of their younger days. It's where they had fought, and survived, a war that shook the world and changed their own lives in unimaginable...