Clare Hobb is weary of the strict boundaries her uncles impose at the family conclave, Hobb's Mills. She's in love with Larkin Wade, a handsome farmer her uncles disdain. During one of many trysts  between Clare and Larkin, they find her beloved, brain-damaged father, Frank, vainly attempting to aid his brother, Samuel, who has been fatally injured in a wagon runaway accident. It's a festering sore with her uncles that the mentally deficient brother they could do without survives, while Samuel, strong family leader has passed. Guilt that she might have helped prevent the accident brings Clare to painfully end her romance with Larkin, pledge full attention to her family, and be the buffer between her father and her extended family's continuing ill-treatment of him. But nothing seems to be enough and when her uncles will have her father committed to an institution Clare knows it's time to take her parents and siblings from Hobb's Mills for good.Would a new life in Kansas where Larkin has gone ahead be the answer? Will he wait? Is it possible, ever, to bargain true love away?