After her father passes away, Jodie Wines is lonely and overworked. Her stepmother, a vain and lazy woman, leaves Jodie to do everything. Jodie’s one consolation is that she still lives in her father’s house, her childhood home in Boston, in the town she loves. But when she discovers her stepmother’s plot to marry her off to an odious merchant, Jodie flees west to become a mail order bride.

Hayley Roxbury must escape her abusive and alcoholic husband, Roger. Born to wealth and privilege in Pennsylvania, she plans to go live with her grandmother in the remote and wild Wyoming territory. With the help of good friends, she flees her home and husband. Matt Westman, a rancher in Miles Gulch, Wyoming, is tasked with picking up Mrs. Parkland’s granddaughter at the train station. To his delight, she is poised, graceful, and impossibly beautiful.

Upon uncovering her tyrannical father’s malevolent plot to commit her to an asylum, Beth Rutledge fabricates a plan of her own. She will rescue her mother, who had already been sent to the asylum, and escape together on a wagon train heading west. Posing as sisters, Beth and her mother travel with the pioneers in hopes of making it to Idaho before the others start asking too many questions.

When Lily Jones is left by her betrothed, she fears her heart will never fully recover. With no family, Lily decides to follow through on a match made by a matrimonial agency–a match with a wealthy rancher in Mountain Pass, Oregon. Daniel Brown is in his early 30s, a life-long bachelor, and the only inheritor of the beautiful, sprawling acreage of Delia Ranch. But there’s a secret or two that didn’t quite make it into his letter of application for a mail order bride: Daniel has a past that left him broken.

Desperate to help her family, Elaine Rockmont agrees to marry Rodney Kingman, an ordinary bank teller in Fort Riggins, Montana. On the train west, she meets the handsome and entertaining Billy Warwick. The trip passes quickly in Billy’s company, yet she is promised to Rodney. Billy regrets leaving the beautiful and enticing Elaine at the hotel with Rodney. Later, when a pretty young lady shows off a nervous horse as a “wedding present” to Rodney and Elaine, she is thrown from the saddle. Rodney’s quick and intense response is puzzling. What is going on here?