Jericho Rhodes, twenty-seven and just out of Union Seminary in New York City, leaves the man she is in love with and plans to marry and comes to the small town of Licking Creek, Pennsylvania, to try out, on her own, her vocation as a parish minister. There she confronts the issues of the larger world - a factory making missile detectors, few employment opportunities for young people, drug abuse, neglect of the poor and outcast, violence, sexism in many forms, and fears for the future. It is also in Licking Creek that she meets two more men - one not at all intimidated by ministers, and another who alternately attracts and infuriates her.
The greatest need of the town is for a place where the community's youth can gather. Jericho, with the help of her church's young people, enthusiastically undertakes a fund-raising event to set up such a center. But along with work on the Youth Center project and other personal, church, and town concerns, the minister as innovator, as catalyst, has set in motion forces which will ravage the community, and before Talent Night is over a marriage will be in serious jeopardy, a father-daughter relationship will have escalated into violence, and a young man she has urged the community to trust will bring about the death of two people Jericho Rhodes has come to love.
