Noah Swift Hawk and Ann Williams break the law that prohibits interracial marriage. Judge Daniel Hall of Arkansas uncovers what he believes is their disgusting sin and condemns the transgressors to months of hard labor. The two lovers willingly struggle through and serve their sentence. What they can't endure is the forced separation that the judge has also ordered. Under the threat of lashings and more hard labor, Ann, her sisters, Stephanie and Sally, and her brother-in-law, Eli, purposefully disobey and reunite with Noah close to the western frontier at Pine Bluff. In the winter of 1840, even though they fear discovery, Noah and Ann refuse to part. They hide with their family at Roscoe Bacon's Trading Post and try to survive a very snowy winter beside the Arkansas River. Emotional wounds, left by the death of Ann's parents two years before, surface and plague her. Noah tries to help the woman he loves and leads the group in a Native American mourning ceremony. Does bringing a ritual from Noah's past into the present create a rift, or do the bonds of family love grow stronger? Are the lovers discovered, is their romance doomed, or do they get away with sharing a forbidden love?