Love comes to a couple just as a family crisis arises and the clouds of war loom on the horizon. Will Castleberry has just taken a wife rather late in his life. A registered letter arrives for him at the post office in Channahatchee, Alabama. His sister in Georgia has died, just 4 years after her husband. Her 6 children will be orphans unless he takes them in and asks his new wife to help him to raise them. The nation is on the verge of rending itself asunder, an action that Will knows will bode badly for the south. Getting them to Alabama and getting his expanded family through the coming conflict will be a challenge for them. Could the marriage vows mean Nancy should take on 6 children before she even gives birth to their first child?