Goodness brings the reader into a close-knit community of midwestern peace activists, whose coming of age during the tumult of the 1960s profoundly shapes the rest of their lives. The evolving relationships among friends and lovers, women and women, women and men, mothers and their children are woven into a story of pain and discovery, of trying to change the world during an era of intense social upheaval, and of trying to maintain the idealism of the 1960s without succumbing to the cynicism of later years.