It is 1949 and Jessamine Brady is seemingly content living in the Harmony Hill Shaker Village. But even though she has been there for half her life, she still struggles with dreams of the outside world and has many questions. When she and another sister find a stranger, Tristan Cooper, hurt and in need of help in the woods, they help him back to their town by breaking a lot of Shaker rules. But Jessamine finally gets to feel the face and arms of a man, ride his horse with him back to the town and finds that it was all very pleasurable. Tristan stays with the Shakers until he is healed enough to leave and by that time the feelings between Jessamine and Tristan were more than just "friends". When Jessamine discovers her father, and he takes her away from the Shakers, she will discover a whole new world. Can she survive her new world or retreat back to the Harmony Hill village and all its rules?

Another very interesting story about the "Shaker" movement. I really liked Jessamine and her desire to know more and experience a love that she would never experience in the Shaker world. ( )