Once Upon a Summer — Natalie Shipman

The summer that Dan was seventeen, he met Christina Edgren--and the world was miraculously changed. Christina was seven years older than Dan--and from the "other side of the tracks"--but her beauty, her poise, her understanding wove a spell about the impressionable boy. He looked forward to returning to Windover the next summer--but before then, the country was to enter into the cataclysm of war...

It is seven years before Dan returns to Windover with his young bride, Kay, and meets Christina again. Christina's marital road is no easy one, but her unquenchable spirit shines as brightly as before. In contrast is the pampered Kay's refusal to accept the conventional life of a small New England village.