Follow a new generation of the Dutton family during the early twentieth century when pandemics, historic drought, the end of Prohibition and the Great Depression all plague the mountain west, and the Duttons who call it home.

Candy and Pat Montgomery and Betty and Allan Gore — two churchgoing couples — enjoy their small town Texas life... until an extramarital affair leads somebody to pick up an axe.

The worldview of a young woman working as a girlfriend-for-hire begins to change after she returns a lost cat to its lonely owner.