Having grown up in London as inseparable friends, Minnie and Emily are forced apart when Minnie falls in love and marries a handsome young man. Together she and her new husband try their luck as farmers on the Alberta prairie, full of high hopes and pioneering spirit.
Emily, determined to seek her own adventure, soon joins Minnie in the "last best west," but she is shocked by what she discovers when she sees her friend again. When tragedy strikes, Minnie begins anew, always aware of the fragility of happiness. Though she rarely discusses the trauma of her past, its shadow falls across subsequent generations of her family.
Unable to simply share her burden outright, it is left to one of the youngest members of Minnie's clan, Amelia, to untangle the threads of memory and record the truth, all while dealing with the fallout from her own unhappy romance in the late 20th century. Amelia learns that no matter what she discovers about the past, she gets to choose how to incorporate that knowledge into her present. In finding the truth about Minnie's life, Amelia becomes the author of her own.