Plot summary

Widowed now for three years, Colonel Tom Brennan has taken early retirement due to injury and in not wanting a desk job in the military. He however has no idea what he will do in his civilian life. His jobless state is potentially short-lived when a former superior, Major-General Henry Cabot, now the head of the Stone Creek School Board, offers him a job at his alma mater, Stone Creek Military Academy. The academy has taken a downward slide in recent years, where they have insufficient enrollment and donations to keep the school open much longer, and where the military tradition has largely fallen by the wayside. The Board has hired a new Dean of Academics for the academy, Caroline Foster, whose background is in education and not the military. Wanting some military oversight within the administration, Henry would like Tom to head the military program to bring honor back into the mindset of the academy. Despite being no where close to what he envisioned his civilian life to be, Tom accepts the job. Arriving at the academy, Tom finds that indeed there is little military discipline among the cadets. He and Caroline also immediately butt heads, as she has no interest in adhering to those über-strict military traditions, she who believes in flexibility and the spiritual benefits of yoga. Despite their differences, they know they have to work together as they have the same end goal, working together which still may be difficult if not impossible. Their task becomes even more urgent when news hits that the Board is planning on selling the academy at the end of the school year. What happens at the academy and between Tom and Caroline is affected by, among others, two people: Tom's college student daughter, Kylie Brennan, who loves her father but who doesn't want to be treated like a soldier by him; and cadet Mason Keller, typical of many of the cadets who were sent to the academy by their parents in a last ditch effort to straighten them out.—Huggo