When Lauren Butler’s father is stricken with a massive stroke, she stays behind to nurse him rather than proceed with her marriage and accompany her husband to his posting as an Inspector in the North West Mounted Police. Little does she know that her father will miraculously linger between life and death for two years, despite medical opinions otherwise. Upon his death, Lauren decides to pick up the pieces of her life and join Adam in the rugged and wild District of Alberta in the North West Territories despite his vehement objections. Life in the Territories is brutal, primitive and isolated, especially for women, Adam insists. And he knows well after two years of helping bury the children and wives of tenacious settlers and the Cree Indians he watches over. Upon her arrival, Lauren finds this is not the man she once knew. This Adam has become a hard man, one finely honed by the hardships of his job and hopelessly seduced by the beauty of the Territories. Now she must somehow carve out a place for herself in his heart and in this wild land that holds him captive.