High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Sacrifices of the Heart (working title Spring Thaw) is a 2007 television film starring Melissa Gilbert and Ken Howard that aired on Hallmark Channel in 2007 The film is made from a script by Patti Davis, daughter of Ronald Reagan. Katelyn 'Kate' Weston (Melissa Gilbert) is a lawyer who is estranged from her family. Her older brother Ryan (Cyril O'Reilly) asks her to return to the farm he runs with their dad Thane (Ken Howard), who has become increasingly absentminded. By the time he is formally diagnosed with serious Alzheimer's disease, Kate realizes how much she doesn't know her family, having run from her past after the trauma of witnessing her mother's suicide at age seven. She decides to spend the remainder or her father's lucid moments reconciling with him and learning the things she never knew about her own family.