War widow Salina Meier Moffett Dunham doesn't trust men. Shamefully treated by her father and husband, she is on the run with her children to escape a forced marriage or worsedeath. In Ainsley, Kansas, she shortens her name to Lena Meier to hide from the man pursuing her. She finds a position as a clerk in the mercantile with the grouchy storekeeper. But there is something within that grumpy man that her heart hears and draws her. She isn't sure what that thing is until she discovers a book in the storeroom of the mercantile.