Sarah Novak has an impossible dream. She wants to be a schoolteacher, but everyone in Riverford, Texas in 1895 knows that immigrant farm girls do not become teachers. It's an absurd notion, and the sooner it's squashed, the better! Riverford has another problem -- a troublesome newcomer named Victoria Hodges. She's a Bohemian nonconformist who ran off to Europe 20 years ago to become an artist. How she managed to hook wealthy local businessman, Hayden Hodges, is more than a body can understand. One thing's for certain. She's a corrupting force who must be removed from decent society! These things can get out of hand, you know. Fortunately, Edith Bellows knows how to nip these problems in the bud: a united stand of all the decent ladies and a cold-shouldered shut-out of such radicalism--that s the ticket. But Mrs. Bellows barely gets her campaign underway when mutiny in the ranks occurs. Why on earth would genteel Christine Boyd, daughter of famed Confederate Gen. Gibbes of Charleston, South Carolina, befriend those two reprobates? Bless her heart! Doesn't she understand that the very life blood of Southern womanhood --propriety--is at stake? There will be no skirting of tradition on Mrs. Bellows watch! Or will there?
