After her father dies in the war, Audrey Grant loses everything, including her fiancé. Penniless, she leaves her home town and becomes a school teacher in Ainsley, Kansas, to support herself and her mother. Once the fighting ends and soldiers come home, she finds the newly-returned smithy to be a remarkable man, but she doubts he would be interested in an over-weight, near-sighted schoolmarm.

Livery stable owner and smithy, Fergus MacPherson values family above everything but God. He craves a wife and children, but a deeply hidden secret since childhood and his actions during the war have ripped that dream away. Although he draws comfort from tending his beloved flower garden in the evenings, the men he killed and the families he destroyed during the war haunt his sleep at night.

Can these two hearts see a way to heal each other before three men searching for Audrey arrive in town?