Ranch life saps the good looks from a woman, and eighteen-year-old Summer Gorman has no intention of letting that happen to her. Looking to experience life and make her own way in the world, she leaves her parents, Herm and Sara, and their run-down 1,400-acre ranch. Hitching a ride into Rialto, a small Tex-Mex town thirty miles from the ranch, Summer lands a job as a waitress at Cafe Rialto, a diner owned by former boxer Sharkey Gallos. Looking for excitement and perhaps romance, Summer finds plenty of each. As her romance with Sharkey grows, so does her realization that Sharkey's passion for big money and his increasing involvement with the drug traffic are heading for big trouble. Summer finds her ties with the ranch are not completely severed, as her former classmate Clay Burnside rediscovers her in Rialto and awakens old memories she had forgotten. Then, her mother promotes her own ambitions, as well as spiting Summer, by deeding the ranch to her church. Summer begins a season filled with periods of breathtaking beauty and moments of abject terror. She learns who she is and what love is really about while growing from a girl into a woman."