In 1915 it has been three years since Lucy Richards left her teaching post in West Texas and returned home where she is busy being indispensable to her eccentric mother, keeping her Aunt Catherine comfortable, and taking on many of the chores her very pregnant sister no longer feels up to. She decides to choose a husband from the local beaus, but none of them stands a chance when handsome, irreverany Josh Arnold comes to town. The newlyweds move to the sleepy hamlet of Sweet Shrub, Arkansas, where they are soon caught up in the lives of their neighbors and discover that the surface tranquility of the town hides simmering tensions and unrest that will inevitably result in tragedy.