Ida Little, a nineteen year old woman from Dallas, has just been told she has seven months to leave her parents' house and all she's ever known. Her parents expect her to marry, but she's so shy she can barely speak to a man she doesn't know well. When Sally Jenkins approaches her at the mercantile where she works, she agrees to join Sally's program for "mail order ministers" providing wives for ministers who have graduated from the seminary where her husband is president. Joshua Anderson is tired of being alone, but he's even more tired of his church members trying to marry him off to girls he considers much too young. There is a shortage of unmarried ladies in Texas outside of the big cities, and he doesn't know where he's going to come up with a woman to marry. When he receives a letter from Sally suggesting he marry her young friend, he starts a correspondence with her. It can't hurt, right?