Sam and Sally Ryan, along with their children, Angel-13 and Danny-12, have built their Stone Creek Winery into much more than a field to grow grapes and a backroom to ferment them into wine. The winery has become a popular destination for weddings, family reunions, and the like, or just a chance to be driven around the beautiful north woods, and up to the fire ring, behind Pop's old team of horses. But the Ryans' perfect world begins crumbling when the school principal, Esther Kellogg, turns a blind eye when Angel is targeted by bullies. To make matters worse, Danny uses a fist to stand up for his sister.
The Ryan kids, as often happens when born to older parents, are independent and worldly beyond their tender years. They are truly inseparable soul twins. Angel rides horse like the wind, taking after her mother, and has inherited her father's spiritual gift of healing others and seeing things in her dreams that are true. She shares her healing talent with anyone in need. Danny, like Sam, would rather drive a team of horses than risk his neck from a saddle. He is more grounded, like his mother, but can be impulsive and stubborn like his father. He stands up for his sister a second time, which gets him expelled from school and lands him back in court.
Chandler, the crooked guardian ad litem, who conspired to have Angel taken from Sally, and failed, now 13 years later, is back. She is appointed to be Danny's child protection worker. To no one's surprise, she and Sam butt heads again, and she paints Danny in the worst light she can. When neither Angel nor Danny will break the vow to each other, to never repeat to anyone what the bullies said that second time Danny was goaded into violence--testimony that would have exonerated Danny--the court sentences him to 30 days in juvenile detention--a devastating outcome for such a tight-knit family.
The Ryan kids and their friends are convinced Chandler's obvious grudge against Sam and Sally is only part of the story, and there has to be a reason for Kellogg to have allowed, and maybe encouraged the bullying. They go to extraordinary lengths to solve the mystery of why they were set up and by whom. Their favorite teacher, Amy Wilson, her first year out of college, risks her career, and even more, it turns out, to help the kids and parents find the truth.
Woven into this drama is a new love story, more colorful characters, plentiful humor, and another journey into the minds, lives and pasts of people who are motivated out of love...and also those who are driven by the opposite...
