In the early 1880’s, CLARA and GENEVA leave privileged lives in Philadelphia and move with their families to a remote valley in southern Colorado. Clara, an unassuming girl of fourteen, is fascinated by sixteen-year-old Geneva’s boldness. With little besides chores to occupy their time in a territory with no neighborhoods or schools, the girls become fast friends. ALBERT, Clara’s widowed father, provides her with a comfortable life, but she also wants his love and devotion. Instead, she gets a stepmother when Albert secretly marries Geneva. Feeling betrayed by her pa and a girl she idolizes, she wants nothing to do with her former friend. Complicating Clara’s predicament, she and Geneva are linked by blood and marriage, forcing them to be together at family gatherings. Sparks fly in southwestern Colorado as the two young women engage in a clash of wills that lasts from 1885 to the flu epidemic of 1918.