In the first of The Manhattan Stories, wealthy heiress Jessica McCarthy desperately wants to be married and have a family. A rogue and a scoundrel, Zachary Belk, the handsomest man in Manhattan, is the only one who has proposed. Even though her father warns her that Zachary won't make a good husband, she marries him. She soon discovers that her father was right. When the stock market crashes, and both families are left penniless, Zachary seeks a new fortune on a property he owns in another Manhattan, in Kansas. They are only there a short time before he deserts her. With a new baby, Jessica must learn to survive and support her family in an unfamiliar frontier land with only her faith and determination to guide her. Can she make her own way in the world and find the love she was meant to have in a place so different from the home she left? Just as she believes she has a happy future with a true love, an unexpected development threatens it all.