"The Remember Box was Aunt Kate's private place, the one we were sternly forbidden to open. As I reached toward it, a ray of sunlight set golden dust motes swirling around me like little lost worlds. Suddenly I was reluctant, even fearful, a modern Pandora, about to let out our own lost world. That box held one year I'd spent a lifetime trying to forget." Summers in Job's Corner meant big trees, cool grass and sweltering afternoons stretching endlessly under the Southern sun. Days before television and air conditioning, a time when clocks ticked comfortingly in the night and a cool breeze was a gift. But as the summer of 1949 comes to an end, events will transform this sleepy Southern crossroads. It is 1949 in the small rural community of Job's Corner, North Carolina. After losing her mother to polio, eleven-year-old Carley Marshall is sent to live with Aunt Kate and Uncle Stephen Whitfield and cousins Abby and John. Uncle Stephen takes a post as pastor to a Presbyterian congregation, Bethel Church. Their welcome begins to wear thin as Stephen challenges age old beliefs and traditions. Though this Southern community seems to be filled with people who are the 'salt of the earth', secrets and lies are hidden beneath the surface and the truth must be revealed before an innocent man is convicted of murder. Carly eventually learns to face her own family secrets and discovers that we must all make the journey to truth alone. The novel begins with a grown Carley receiving the Remember Box from her cousin Abby. It is written as a flashback as Carley struggles to write the true story of what happened that year in Job's Corner from a box of tangible memories.