It's 1940 and Tina Janz doesn't want to marry the man her pious Mennonite parents have chosen for her. He's as boring as turnips compared with Frank Warkentin. Obsessed with the dashing half-Gypsy Frank, Tina leaves her job in Vancouver to marry him. Sadly, her joy gives way to loneliness on Frank's farm in the prairie community of Coyote, Saskatchewan. When he shuns local Mennonites because some of them scorn his mixed parentage, Tina feels torn between her Mennonite heritage and her husband. Their son's death drives the couple farther apart. Then fresh challenges send them stumbling toward a new understanding of love, loyalty, faith, and freedom. Tina and Frank's story is told with energy and humour. Colourfully woven into its time and place, it's a well-researched portrayal of family life on the home front during the Second World War and beyond.
