Alone after the war, a Confederate widow takes in a destitute Union captain

As she breaks her back to plow her barren fields, Karen Courtney cannot help but glance at the road towards Mobile, hoping to see her beloved husband riding home. He has been gone for four years, and though she knows he must be dead, her broken heart refuses to give up hope. Finally, a man arrives, but not the sort for which she was looking. He is not Southern; he is not a gentleman. But Kurt Northway may prove to be just the man for whom she was waiting.

A Yankee captain whose Southern wife died during the war, he has come to Alabama to retrieve his son. Friendless, broke, and far from the Mason-Dixon Line, he begs Karen for work for the sake of the boy, and she takes pity on the child. At Karen's shattered farm, love will take root—if her Confederate heart is not too proud to let it flourish.