While traveling to Rockwell Falls in an assignment of the US Census Bureau, the surveyor from Chicago Steve Kady has two flat tires nearby the small town. The local Deputy Bobby Caine brings him to the town and the Mayor Grateman lodges him in a farm, where the gorgeous Courtney Lovett lives with her mother. Steve finds that Rockwell Falls, considered by the locals as the most perfect place on Earth, has the same population since 1860 and sooner he discloses the meaning and the dark secret of their creed of solidarity and steadfastness.

In Depression-era New England, a miserly businessman named Benedict Slade receives a long-overdue attitude adjustment one Christmas eve when he is visited by three ghostly figures who resemble three of the people whose possessions Slade had seized to collect on unpaid loans. Assuming the roles of the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future from Charles Dickens' classic story, the three apparitions force Slade to face the consequences of his skinflint ways, and he becomes a caring, generous, amiable man.

Will Morrison and Daniel Bloom were the best of friends. They grew up together. Went to the same schools. Liked the same records. Loved the same girls. Daniel was Will's best man at his wedding to Maggie Claire. Then one day Will disappeared without a word. Half a decade later he re-surfaces and sets off a tsunami of unforeseeable events.