In the dark days of the Great Depression, when eleven-year-old Bobbie Rycroft became Annie Ashley, cherished daughter of Alan and Lenore, she left behind a life of fear and deprivation. Or so she believed as she grew to womanhood, sheltered in an affluent home with every material possession and opportunity. Graduating from Vassar just as America gears up for war, she enters into a hasty marriage with David Levinson only ten days before he goes overseas. When he returns, they are strangers. David loves Annie deeply, but he realizes that she cannot live in the present until she has made peace with her past. When he urges her to find Albert Rycroft's shining star, she insists that Bobbie is dead. But David knows that Bobbie is very much alive and that his own tangled connection to her past could put Annie in danger of losing her life.