In 1882 Boston, eighteen-year-old Nora Flanagan works as a maid and dreams of achieving the respectability and security denied her as a tinker's daughter in Ireland. Then she meets Tade Larkin, who tells of better things in the Montana Territory where he works as a miner. Nora makes the journey across the country to marry Tade. But life is harsh in the West, and Nora faces challenges she never imagined. Through it all she is sustained by the affection of an unlikely protector and her growing love for the wild, untamed landscape of the West.