Expecting great adventure in the new land of Texas, Amelia's dreams are shattered when her employer abandons her in Galveston. The handsome ship doctor's marriage proposal seems too good to be true. And it is. Doctor Stein is not the man she imagines, and settling with him in the German immigrant camp on the Texas coast only feeds her sense of failure. Amelia's secret life is masked by growing prosperity and her successful operation of Doctor Stein's mercantile store. A buying trip to New Orleans opens a whole new chapter of personal fulfillment and frees an independent woman.