It began when Jeff and his fellow newspaper staffers wrote, on a lark, an obnoxious note to Ruth attacking her and the nightriding South; her electrifying reply began a flurry of letters. Within a month, Jeff launched a Yankee invasion into the heart of Dixie. Neither irate parents nor the glint of a Mississippi deputy's pistol in the dead of night would keep them from meeting.
That visit was the beginning of a friendship that, despite time's passing and the great gulf of distance, would sustain them both through love affairs, heartbreaks, regrets, social change, divorce, and the loss of a cherished friend.