As students in the same Harvard writing class, Susan Masters and Caleb Montiel make a pact: if either lives out a story too emotionally intense to handle, they will give it to the other to write. But the turmoil of the Vietnam era separates them, even as their stories begin to intertwine. Twenty years later, Susan receives a box of journals--a record of Caleb's social service on the Mississippi Gulf Coast following Hurricane Camille, and of his secret, transforming love not only for the people and the place, but for Grayce Chadwick, a beautiful young wife and mother, extraordinary and irresistible to Caleb. Susan embarks on writing Caleb's story--which mirrors the complicated shame the nation suffered during the Vietnam years--only to find it still entwines with her own. The Assigned Visit is a portrait of how deep emotion endures across both time and distance.