April Edwards, a young widow, is content to manage a farm with her fourteen-year-old brother and a one-year-old daughter. Nothing, after all, could be worse than being married to her deceased husband. Nothing, that is, until her unscrupulous brother-in-law decides to marry her. With no other recourse, April and her brother concoct a plan—one that involves the unsuspecting doctor's assistant, Joel Larson.

Joel Larson doesn't want to be married. In fact, he's perfectly happy with things the way they are, but when he's sent to check on April's sick child, things take an unexpected turn for the worse. In one instant, he finds a gun and a mandate to marry April staring him in the face. Can a marriage that begins with a shotgun be just the thing Joel needs or has April just confined herself to another miserable marriage?