In 1888 in Prairie Hill, Nebraska, a few months after barely surviving a deadly blizzard that has killed two of her brothers, fourteen-year-old Hannah goes to work at the home of a wealthy widow with progressive social ideas, where she finds Isaac, who is also trying to make a new life for himself. Told from alternating points of view of Hannah and Isaac.

The story of a French priest who goes to New Mexico and, with another priest, wins the Southwest for the Catholic Church. After forty years, he dies--the archbishop of Santa Fe.