She had a dream, but reaching her goal seemed as dark as night... Fresh from medical school in the 1860s-and a woman at that-the young Dr. Cheney Duvall struggles to find a position. She has almost given up hope when Asa Mercer turns up. He wants her services to chaperone and care for two hundred brides-to-be on a sea voyage from New York to Washington Territory. Cheney jumps at the opportunity. Accompanied by an unlikely nurse, Shiloh Irons, Cheney...

With New Orleans as their destination, Cheney Duvall and her nurse, Shiloh Irons, leave behind the glittering lights of New York City and travel first to Charleston, South Carolina, intending to stay for only a short time. But the purpose of their stop immediately draws them into the plight of this war-torn Southern city, in the painful throes of Reconstruction and carpetbagger policies after the Civil War. As Cheney and Shiloh are embroiled in the...

Cheney faces two enemies-superstition and greed... Cheney Duvall has proven herself as a true doctor to those 200 brides with whom she traveled to the West. But arrival in Seattle with a string of medical successes during the voyage does not open any doors for her in this frontier town-she's "just a woman." Returning east, she finds an invitation to a remote spot in the Ozark mountains where there are no doctors at all. But she runs into walls of...