At the end of the nineteenth century, seventeen-year-old Hannah McCade is in love with the handsome rascal, Clive Wilson. All she wants is a wedding ring and a cabin in the Tennessee hills; but life takes a sharp detour when she becomes pregnant and Clive abandons her to seek his fortune, leaving Hannah to face the gossip of Summer Creek'and unwed motherhood'alone.Hannah's mother, Sally McCade, middle aged, unhappy, and desperate, is about to do the unthinkable'abandon her husband and home to follow her dreams. Despondent over the deaths of her two small children, exasperated over the sexual indiscretions of her young adult daughters, and mortified over her husband's infidelities, Sally boards a train and disappears into the night, leaving her family behind.Two women'mother and daughter'seek their destinies on paths that will converge a decade later on the lonely prairies of Wyoming, where Sally has taken up homesteading'and where Hannah seeks to mend the broken chords of the family.