Rose is still young and darkly pretty, her body not yet settled into the shapeless lumpiness caused by too many babies and too much backbreaking farm work. Her children, her kitchen and her garden make up her world in rural wartime Ontario. It is an existence defined by immigrant poverty and a loveless marriage to Jacob, a man whose own existence is crippled by disappointment and self-loathing. Then passion and hope burst into Rose's life in the handsome countenance of Bobby, Rose and Jacob's landlord, a black man whose grandparents fled to Canada through the Underground Railroad. Rose and Bobby's friendship grows into a dangerous love affair, where unpaid back rent is forgiven and an uneasy triangle begins to form amongst the three. But now Rose is pregnant, and caught in a terrible suspension of indecision. Jacob will never give up his children to her, but Bobby is her only salvation for love and happiness.
