From This Day Forward — Bettye Griffin

With two teenage sisters and an ailing father to care for, thirty-two year old Cornelia "Hatch" Hatchet's dreams for her future are now confined to working the night shift at Super Kmart. Life in her dreary, poverty-stricken hometown of Farmingdale, Illinois just seems doomed to stay the same, day in and day out--until a reporter comes to town and changes everything.

TV news journalist Skye Audsley's assignment is to report on the desolate conditions in Farmingdale, but it couldn't have come at a worse time. His beloved grandmother is frail and all alone back home in New York, and the bleak town does little to lift spirits. But then he interviews Hatch, the interview becomes lunch, and soon the real news story is about a small-town working woman and a big city reporter falling head-over-heels in love.