Returning wounded from the Civil War to his hometown in South Carolina, Bryan Abbott finds his family has declared him dead. His fiancée Lizbeth Wilkes is still single, and he decides to move with her to Owens Bluff, Texas and start life over on the western frontier. Lizbeth reluctantly agrees to stay a short time but finds Owens Bluff not to her liking, and longs to return to her native South Carolina. Her maid Cassie and Bryan begin to find each other as the gulf between his fiancée and he widens. In the end things begin to move faster than Bryan can cope with and life on the Texas frontier proves fraught with menace and surprise.