The people are restless - the effects of prejudice and hate. Blood has already been spilled by some from over the border, and there has been talk of war.
Feisty and full of restless rebellion, Charlotte Mary West - called Charlie by her friends - is concerned, but what captures her most frequent thought is finding relief from her own dreary and uneventful life.
Grant, her husband of an arranged marriage, owns a general store in the embarkation town of Independence, Missouri. His only ambition is making fistfuls of money selling supplies to the pioneers of the wagon trains leaving down the Oregon and Santa Fe Trails.
But stocking shelves and waiting on customers has never been Charlie's idea of adventure. Her dream has been to return to the West where she was born, to explore the new land before it disappears, to have part in settling it, and she fights for the right to her own dreams!
On a beautiful spring morning, Charlie's best friend, Matilda, visits with exciting news. Her husband, Josiah, has decided to move their family West - they have joined the first wagon train out. Exciting news for Matilda, perhaps, but terrible news for Charlie. Within weeks not only will she be losing her best friends, but she will still be stuck here - working in a general store, imprisoned by a loveless marriage.
Topping even that for bad news, Charlie's father, Micah Fremont - the one who has been her rock and her strength, breaks the news to her that Captain Chastain has hired him on as scout for the wagon train. Much as he hates to leave her, he also will be leaving soon.
How cruelly unfair! Everyone is leaving but her! Yet since she was a young girl, this dream of going West has been hers! Why, if the world is offering a silver platter of opportunities to anyone who wanted, could she not partake? Of all people, she should not be the one left behind.
Then tragedy strikes. A devastating fire comes off the drought-stricken prairie and ravages half the town. Many buildings including West's Mercantile burn to the ground. Some of the townspeople are injured - and a few die, including Charlie's husband.
Now at only age 19, Charlie is a widow, no means of support - and quite unexpectedly a mother to an orphaned mixed-race child. All her life, Charlie has been told what to do. Now for the first time, she will have to make every decision about her and her new daughter's futures.
Feeling suddenly alone, confused, and unsure of her own tenacity, Charlie feels defeated. Noticing how overwhelmed she feels, her father relates an incident from his past, a story of a small, crippled sage hen he once saw in the Rockies, who had to fight with every ounce of strength she could muster to overcome her handicap and survive.
* * *
Dirks Braelen is on the run from his life as a hired gun in Texas. He is ready to hang up his holster and try to find some peace for his soul. He may be ready to leave his old life behind, but the people he knew then may not let him. One day in the hills he meets a stranger - a feisty young woman with freckles and strawberry-blonde hair. Immediately taken with her, he can't help but wonder if she holds the key to his future happiness.
Dirks is trying to escape his past. Charlie is trying to escape her present. To find real happiness, both must reach back into Micah Fremont's story to understand the secret of 'the sacrifice of the sage hen.'
Feisty and full of restless rebellion, Charlotte Mary West - called Charlie by her friends - is concerned, but what captures her most frequent thought is finding relief from her own dreary and uneventful life. 
