Kerry Halligan is 22 years old. She's beautiful and talented, a superb mezzosoprano who just graduated from Oberlin as one of the stars from the program. But...she doesn't have a job, which means she has to move home to tiny McCord, Mississippi, where she has to live with her widowed father, a domineering pastor who did his best to turn her childhood into a living hell. All seems lost, until she meets the new guest choir director at her father's church, James Cavanaugh, who's about to change her life forever in ways she never dreamed.