MELISSA HORTON is a widow who leases out apartments located on the second floor of her house in a small town located in northern Minnesota. She is still recovering financially from her husband's death, which left her in debt up to her ears with no money to pay the bills with. She works two jobs in addition to renting the apartments. It was the one good thing her late husband had done, changed the upstairs into apartments once the last of their children had left for college.

JAMES BONNER is seeing the outside of his prison cell for the first time in five years. Falsely imprisoned for a crime he did not commit he has come to the small Minnesota town his father brought him fishing to when he was a boy in the hopes of starting over.