At 17, Christy Huddleston decides to leave her comfortable life in Asheville, N.C., to teach at a mission schoolhouse in a rural Appalachian community. The school is run by strong-willed Quaker Alice Henderson, whose speech in a church inspired Christy to take this enormous leap of faith. Once in Cutter Gap, Tenn., she finds herself the object of attention from two very different men: the Rev. David Grantland, a minister from Boston, and Dr. Neil MacNeill, a Cutter Gap native struggling to bring 20th-century medicine to this backwoods community. Christy also discovers a good friend in mountain woman Fairlight Spencer.