When Saturday Comes, set in the island city of Galveston, Texas in 1966 (prologue and epilogue 1988), is the story of one woman, Jennifer McClain, and how her tragic death in 1931, at the age of twenty-three, has shaped and altered the lives of three generations of men - her surviving husband, Dewey McClain, now seventy-four, their son, James, four at the time of her death, but now thirty-nine, and David, the ten-year-old son of James. For all three, the summer of 1966 is a journey. For Dewey, it is a journey toward death. For James, an unsuccessful journey toward acceptance of his mother's fate. And for David, it is a dramatic journey into manhood.