When Paige Lassiter, scared and covered with bruises, comes into his bar with her three-year-old son, Marine John "Preacher" Middleton, immediately drawn to this courageous woman, offers her a safe haven in his arms.

When Pete, a local pastor, and his best friend, Hank, a bartender, decide to switch jobs until Christmas Eve, they begin to see each other’s lives in a new light as they each discover a new love to cherish, forever changing their lives.

Longtime bartender Malcolm Gephardt realizes his dream of owning a bar, The Half Moon, while his wife Jess, a lawyer struggling with fertility issues, wonders how to reshape her life, in a novel told over the course of one tumultuous week, laying bare the complexities of marriage, family, longing and desire.