On Nancy’s 18th birthday, her father tells her she must marry her cousin Abner, the town’s blacksmith. He’s already married to three other women, one of them her younger sister. Nancy runs away and gets lost in the woods. Hungry and cold, she finds a seemingly deserted cabin and takes shelter. When she meets Jake, the man who owns it, she must decide if he is a man she can trust. Tired of living alone in the wilderness, he is willing to wait for Nancy to learn to care for him. She expects to spend her life there, but Abner has other ideas. Thinking they will only be safe in one place, Jake takes Nancy to his childhood home, Manhattan, Kansas.