Meridian, Ohio, seems like a nostalgic reverie of the American heartland, a place where community spirit and old-fashioned values have not been lost. Certainly that is the image promoted by a big-network television documentary - an image that the townspeople protect at the price of splitting Meridian apart.

Helen Fielding, a young pediatrics resident, arrives as a "visiting physician" to treat a bacterial outbreak that threatens Meridian's children. She is presumed a stranger in a town poisoned by an undercurrent of hostility and resentment in the wake of the documentary. But Helen is no stranger to Meridian. Her family vacationed there when she was a child, until the central shattering event of their lives - the disappearance of Helen's little sister.

As Helen discovers the betrayals at the center of Meridian's disintegration, she also learns the terrible secret in her own family, bringing hope of redemption to the town and, for Helen, the possibility of genuine love.