Mayor Emily Warwick is plagued by the challenges of a re-election campaign, the demands of her elderly mother, her sister's upcoming marriage to a man her mother does not like, the death of her husband, and the guilt of giving her child up for adoption.

Emily Anderson, a college freshman raised by her grandparents, discovers the love story of the young parents she never knew, sets out to find them, and brings them together, a fighter pilot and a war correspondent whose love for each other remains but is made complicated by their opposing religious and political views in the midst of the Iraq War.