Diane Garner considers herself a small town Texas Anglo girl with an astonishingly successful single mom. She experiences a dramatic transition from desperate poverty that resulted when her father abandoned the family.

The family finds prosperity in a small Texas town when her mother becomes a hospital executive-a very unusual career for a woman in the fifties. Diane grows up in the nurturing community where she enjoys various adventures and mischievous pranks with friends. One day at the age of twenty-two she learns a startling secret about her mother's hidden past, then embarks on a journey to restore the lost legacy of her family.