Young Civil War widow Alida Garrison survives a shipwreck off the Texas Gulf coast, but loses her five-year-old son to the sea. Strong hands lift her from the rocky shore, and with time and the gentle care of an old healing woman, she comes through the mist of grief and guilt. Rafe Bishop, an apparently crippled Union soldier, keeps a shop in the village. He is reticent about himself, yet constantly asks probing and often infuriating questions. On a bluff above the tiny adobe village is a forbidding stone mansion where lanterns burn on stormy nights as if "calling someone home." Martin Cooper, a brooding, die-hard Confederate angry at the South's surrender, lives there with his son, William, a shy, unhappy boy much like Alida's own. She happily agrees to care for him, moving into Cooper's house. Bishop is self-effacing and gentle. Wealthy Martin Cooper is masterful and sometimes cold. Are these men more or less than they seem? Alida bears a striking resemblance to Cooper's dead wife. Is that why his interest in her grows? Does Rafe Bishop's attention come from sincere emotion, or mere curiosity? Both men have secrets, but do those secrets have anything to do with her?