Bits of Spirit

It's 1980 and Lainey Adams has recently married Jeff Taylor after a brief courtship and agrees to leave her friends and family to move to East Tennessee for Jeff's new job. But Jeff's job requires extensive travel, and as he spends more and more time away, Lainey finds herself alone in an unfamiliar place.

To fill the emptiness, she throws herself into teaching. She loves her students and fellow teachers, but there are troubling cracks in the system, deeper than she could have expected. At the same time, as Lainey begins to uncover the truth behind Jeff's frequent absences, she finds she must make challenging decisions to keep her head held high, her path on track, and her spirit intact.

Lainey has always believed a person's spirit is like a teacup, capable of holding warmth and comfort, yet fragile. It can chip and crack, and sometimes be damaged beyond repair. Now older, Lainey looks back on that defining year, the year her spirit was pushed to its limits, the year her resilience proved her spirit could not be broken.