Amanda, a faded southern belle, abandoned wife, and dominating mother, hopes to match her daughter Laura with an eligible "gentleman caller" while her son Tom supports the family. Laura, lame and painfully shy, evades her mother's schemes and reality by retreating to the make-believe world of her glass animal collection. Tom eventually leaves home to become a writer but is forever haunted by the memory of Laura.

The year is 1912. Vowing to swear off women for good, curmudgeonly Seth Atkins takes refuge tending a remote Cape Cod lighthouse. Then, a mysterious stranger literally washes ashore in Seth's life, with a past full of secrets and a similar aversion to females. But the arrival of two beautiful, spirited women will test the men's resolve.

The saga of three generations of the Trask and Hamilton families in the early 1900's in Northern California.