For the Heart's Treasure

"For the Heart's Treasure" is the story of a young man and a young woman who fall in love just before the 1929 crash of the New York Stock Market, the harbinger of the Great Depression. They are diametric opposites. Jack Stewart, 28, movie-star handsome, is a dedicated skirt-chaser. A WWI army veteran and U.S. Navy sailor, he admits he distributed his DNA all over the world in his conquests of women. Eva Conner, 24, severely damaged by her upbringing and by a marriage to a man who left her with gonorrhea, is not ready for another relationship with any man. Her mother, a cruel and domineering passive-aggressive, continues to affect her adult life, and her father, divorced from her mother and remarried, is a drunk and a wife beater. Moreover, her five brothers are destructive alcoholics and her little sister is showing signs of a sociopath. Set against the Great Depression that subjected countless lives to turmoil and suffering similar to Eva's, they are married. Overshadowing their tenuous relationship is Jack's past exploits and Eva's fear that he may not have changed.