Follow Elizabeth's twenty-five years of trials and tribulations in the raw Republic of Texas near Jefferson and Caddo Lake from 1840 through the American Civil War. Reared as a sensible, but genteel, Mississippi debutante, she is forced to assume an ahead-of-her-times role. Despite hardships, she builds a successful cotton plantation, yet ends up devastated, penniless, and back where she started-but her spunk, determination, and ambition compel her to begin anew. Widowed, she marries a sawmill owner who shares her work ethic and builds her a fine plantation home before a tragic accident plunges her into a deep depression. She recovers to face recessions, disasters, epidemics, political, and racial upheavals that cause her arrest and trial for teaching slave children to read and write. Texas is drawn into the "War of Rebellion," and her husband joins the Confederate Army while she manages the plantation with little help while waiting and hoping for his return.