A highway and snowy field just outside of Fargo, North Dakota, become an arena in which no encounter is meaningless, no event without echo, no simple hope impossible to realize. Stranded together in a blizzard, each of Jack Mauser's former wives tells the secret tale of burning love that will save her. Their stories repair wounded hearts as their revelations, both comic and painful, blast through the walls between them.

Jack Mauser is a big and passionate man. Though initially central to each woman's tale, during a long night of shared confidences he becomes peripheral to their feelings for one another. There is Eleanor - spoiled, sensual, brainy; Candice - both tougher and more vulnerable than she can admit, especially once she is faced with her attraction to another woman; Marlis - a single mother caught up in a cycle of conflicting wishes; and Dot - both true and desperate, Jack's last and fiercest wife.