Twenty-two-year-old Sarah Catherine McNairy and her mother Elizabeth leave Ireland in 1847 on a ship bound for America. During the journey Elizabeth dies of Typhus, Sarah is devastated and alone.
She finds work in Boston at a boardinghouse but soon realizes how much she misses living on a farm. She answers a newspaper ad from a Willis Harwell who lives on a farm in Kansas and wants a wife.
After months of corresponding, Willis sends Sarah money...