After Beth Stewart's parents got divorce, she lived with her father during the summers on a ranch in the high-mountain plains of Northern Arizona. This was where she met and fell in love with Monty Jarrett. They both enrolled in the same university and were happy until her mother encouraged her to date other boys. Devastated, Monty felt like he could no longer be near her. With the war in Vietnam still raging, the young cowboy joined the army rather than to wait to be drafted.

Matt Stryker, Beth's illegitimate half brother, took over his mother's real estate business in Phoenix, Arizona. On a trip to visit family, Matt met Laura Patterson, a chef from San Francisco. He proposed to her a few months later, and Laura accepted. But she was unaware that Matt still struggled with the love he had lost.

Raised by her grandparents in Germany, Marthe Lange never knew the mother that gave birth to her or the father that abandoned her. After the death of her grandmother, Marthe journeyed to San Diego, California, as an exchange student. Knowing that her father lived close by, she wrote to him. And a few days later, Monty Jarrett came to meet the daughter he had never known.

This is the story of five people, their lives woven together over time. Decisions were made, loved ones lost, and new ones found. Eventually, the paths of these people will emerge, fate inevitably drawing them together across the bands of time, tearing at the fabric of their emotions.