Linnie Ann Adams and her father leave Illinois for Denver expecting abundant rewards from a gold mine investment. All too soon both the stock and Linnie Ann's father die, and she is left penniless and without prospects. She agrees to assist a mining town doctor in Rhodochrosite, Colorado, where explosions, cave-ins, barroom violence, childhood epidemics, and home childbirths fill her days. As time goes by and her skills grow, she finds herself on staff at Maimonides Mountain Hospital for Consumptives in Denver. One day a fierce Colorado thunderstorm brings in a patient, someone she never imagined seeing again. The past returns to add unexpected complications to her apparently settled life.