Hired as a housekeeper to work on the early 1900s Montana homestead of widower Oliver Milliron, the irreverent Rose and her brother, Morris, endeavor to educate the widower's sons while witnessing local efforts on a massive irrigation project.

In the winter of 1920, a quirky bequest draws Morrie Morgan back to Butte, Montana, from a yearlong honeymoon with his bride, Grace. But the mansion bestowed by a former boss upon the itinerant charmer promises to be less windfall than money pit. And the town itself, with its polyglot army of miners striving to extricate themselves from the stranglehold of the ruthless Anaconda Copper Mining Company, seems like the couple's fast-diminishing finances,...