Mollie Williams, the youngest daughter of a widowed rural Appalachian Mountain woman, has a secret, forbidden and abusive love relationship that she cannot reveal to anyone no matter how high the cost. Not even to her own mother Her oldest sister is the only one who suspects what is going on but refuses to betray her or confront her. In order to escape her troubled life in 1870s Virginia, Mollie travels to Kansas to begin a new life and cannot tell anyone why she must leave home. What kind of new struggle awaits her in the west? How will she survive without her lost love?