Hope blooms even in the darkest and cruelest of times in Heartland, by Gabriel Jason Dean. The story pairs two unlikely geographical places: Omaha, Nebraska, and Afghanistan. Geetee (Mari Vial-Golden), is an Afghani orphan who was displaced by war and adopted by Harold (Mark Cuddy), an Afghani scholar who teaches at the University of Nebraska. She returns to her homeland as an adult to teach at Blue Sky, a school for girls. There she meets Nazrullah (Naz, for short), a math teacher at the school.