When young school teacher Jessie Lippert accepts a post to teach school in the tiny prairie town of St. Croix, Kansas she advertises for a traveling companion and housemate and ended up with two. And they couldn't have been more different. Kendal Zimmerman is a middle aged society widow from Omaha and Dana March an angry civil war widow. Together the travel to Kansas to start new lives, new livelihoods and maybe even new loves.