Amy Bartlett hated the Old Olmstead Place. The unpromising homestead seemed another step in the downward spiral of her life. Raised by her maternal Irish immigrant relatives in St. Louis after her mother died in childbirth, Amy barely knew her father and three older brothers who lived on a homestead in western Iowa. When, after she graduated from high school, her father sent for her, she thought it her filial duty.

Feeling out of place on the frontier and detesting her stepmother, Amy marries Jim Bartlett as a means of escape. That escape turns into a nightmare as Jim grows increasingly abusive as they almost starve while homesteading in the Dakotas. When Jim acquires a deed to the Old Olmstead Place in southeastern Oregon's high desert where farmers struggled with the climate and cattle barons, Amy knows her life isn't going to be any better.

Amy stuggles with her conservative Catholic sense of duty and her desire to flee. She hates Southeastern Oregon as much as she hated the Dakotas, Iowa, and her husband. Then a cowboy rides into the Old Olmstead Place to help her chop firewood. Suddenly, Amy's struggle with her conscience becomes even more difficult.