Third generation cattleman and veteran WWI doughboy Deke Sadler didn't miss much. Best friends with Rosalie Leonard since both were small children in the tiny ranching village of Primrose, New Mexico, he watched from the Leonard family's roadside cafe and service station, where Rosalie was a waitress, as changes came slowly to a place that steadfastly resisted change. But, while he and Rosalie met regularly to share each other's intimate company on the Leonard's dusty back porch sofa, blizzards, bootleggers, gossips, coyote plagues, train disasters and sad brushes with mortality taught him that change is inevitable, no matter how slowly it happens."