"Nora Blake, alone in the world, secures a schoolteaching position in Banner, Idaho, where she lives in the home of Bishop Shepherd and becomes acquainted with a Latter-day Saint family. She meets Jed Oliver, a local rancher, and young Ben Wade, an orphan, who lives with Jed. Nora is astonished to find out that Jed cannot read and she offers to teach him. Finding a piece of land open for homesteading, Bishop Shepherd suggests to Nora that she homestead it. A mysterious elderly man, called Old Free, a non-Mormon, challenges Nora's interest." [Publisher's synopsis]