1900. Young pianist Catherine Wainwright flees the fashionable town of Dayton, Ohio in the wake of a terrible scandal. Heartbroken and facing destitution, she finds herself striking up correspondence with a childhood admirer, the recently widowed Oscar Williams. In desperation she agrees to marry him. But when Catherine travels to Oscar's farm on Galveston Island, Texas - a thousand miles from home - she finds she is little prepared for the life that...

It is 1917 in the South Dakota Badlands and the summer has been hard. Rachel and Isaac DuPree had left Chicago fourteen years ago to stake their claim. Isaac, a former Buffalo Soldier, is fiercely proud: black families are rare in the West, and black ranchers even rarer. But it hasn't rained in months, the cattle are bellowing with thirst, and supplies have dwindled. Struggling to feed her family, Rachel is isolated by more than just geography. She...