Missie LaHaye bids a reluctant goodbye at the grave of her late husband Willie, who died two years previously in the line of duty as the sheriff of Tettsford Junction.

Even after giving up her job as the town schoolteacher, Missie has found running the ranch on her own overwhelming, so she has resigned herself to letting her son Jeff and his new bride take control of it jointly with her brothers Aaron and Arnie.

Missie and her ten-year-old son Mattie travel back to her hometown to live near the farm of her parents, Clark and Marty Davis.

At the same time, Missie catches the eye of a passing horseman: bachelor Sheriff Zach Tyler, another target of Mrs. Pettis’ vitriol.

Claiming that Zach is not a godly man, Mrs. Pettis passes her judgment on him, implying he has a shameful past on the wrong side of the law.

Although she is firmly determined not to grant Mattie's request for a new sibling, she goes in—just in time to witness 14-year-old Belinda behaving belligerently toward the Pettises as they choose eight-year-old Jacob—looking on him as a farm worker rather than a son.

Realizing that the lone orphan Belinda will be sent back to the foundling home in New York, Missie volunteers to adopt the poor Romantic soul.

With Jacob secured in a home nearby, Belinda can figure out a way for them to flee; she believes that their father had given them up for adoption with the full intention of reuniting with them in the near future.

Zach tells Missie it was God's miracle that guided him in the wilderness, but as she later admits to her father, she doesn't know how to "let go" of her late husband.

[3] Other winners were: Brian Gordon (producer), Mark Griffiths (director), Dale Midkiff, Pamela Wallace (writer), and Braeden Lemasters.