In 1880 in Chicago, Anastasia Radcliffe plans her escape from her abusive husband down to the last detail. Leaving her wealth and her family behind, she fakes her own drowning, takes on a new identity and flees to California. There, as Tansy Leigh, she begins a new life, claiming to be a farmer’s widow. But the sheriff, Jesse Wolfe, thinks there was something fishy about the widow’s story, and he is determined to discover what it is. Tainted by a failed marriage to a socialite who left him and their sickly daughter and returned to her comfortable life, he concentrates on caring for his daughter. Hired as the little girl’s tutor, Tansy begins to not only fall in love with the child, but also with the tall, handsome, often terse and overprotective father. Unbeknownst to both, a tragic history ties them together, and by the time Jesse discovers what it is, he has already fallen in love. A valued pocket watch sold to a jeweler hundreds of miles away causes her husband to believe she may still be alive. A bounty hunter sent by Tansy’s husband innocently alerts Jesse to the secret that painfully ties them together. Before Jesse can confront Tansy, she is abducted by her husband and whisked away to be permanently institutionalized for ‘melancholia’. A secret note in a beloved novel provides clues to her husband’s past and puts her family on the trail to save her. Jesse must follow the trail as well and find a way to rescue Tansy and finally learn the truth.