In 1815, Isabella Marston, a refined English young lady, is eager to escape her carping mother and constantly quarreling older sisters. Seeing a newspaper advertisement seeking a "lady wife" for a wealthy North American lumberman, she sends a letter and receives a marriage proposal in response. With her maid, her horse, and her dog, she crosses the Atlantic with high expectations, only to receive a heart-wrenching shock on her arrival in the colony of Riverhaven, New Brunswick.
Exhibiting the manners of a barbarian, her prospective groom is brawny, bearded, long-haired, and clad in buckskins. His foreman, Fletcher Atkin, wrote the ad and the letters to Isabella, and he draws her unwilling attention despite his reputation as a gambler, drunkard, and lothario. He at least treats her as a gentleman should, and she wonders about his hidden background.
As the summer progresses, love blooms in duplicate despite a charging bear, a kidnapping, and a brewing war between lumber barons.