What do you want most in the world?

What Anne Marie Roche wants is to find happiness again. At thirty-eight, she's childless, a recent widow, alone. She owns a successful bookstore on Seattle's Blossom Street, but despite her accomplishments, there's a feeling of emptiness.

On Valentine's Day, Anne Marie and several other widows get together to celebrate...hope. They each begin a list of twenty wishes--things they always wanted

...

Shattered by the sudden loss of his wife, home, and business, once-successful advertising executive Alan Christoffersen embarks on a cross-country backpacking journey during which he meets people who help him to gain profound spiritual understandings.

After discovering that her married lover has been killed in an accident, estate lawyer Ana Kelly, alone and undone, seeks friendship with the person who she once thought of as her adversary and opposite, but who is now the only one who shares her pain--Rebecca, her lover's widow.

Not long after Hank, Ana, and Milo Vasquez's father leaves, an alien named Luz arrives and uses them to satisfy his curiosity, then leaves them forever changed.