This is the story of Rachel O'Conner, a frontier nurse who sailed from her home on the Eastern Seaboard to the small outpost town of Astoria, Oregon in the year 1865, just after the Civil War. She goes with young doctor Mark Whitfield to lumber camps, homesteads, Indian villages and far flung settlements.

She finds herself attracted to a young half-breed Indian man, but fights the attraction as he is wild, untamed, and has a devil-may-care attitude about life itself. She marries the doctor, but the handsome young outlaw is persistent and finally rapes Rachel. She gives birth to a little girl whom Mark thinks is his.

The book takes the reader into the personal lives of the early pioneers and Rachel hears stories from lonely housewives of the isolation and sometimes the deaths of loved ones. The story gives a broad over-all picture of stress, strife and struggle.