Though the hills of Kentucky resemble her native Scotland, Afton Burns could not be farther from home. After her mother dies, Afton decides to join her father on his movie set -- despite the fact that this invitation is Kyle Patton's first fatherly gesture since he left home fifteen years before. In debt and deeply unhappy, he is making the film that will determine the rest of hits career. Afton volunteers to help and finds herself in an alien world...

Life hasn't been easy for Jeanne Bettencourt, a widow approaching thirty and struggling to provide for her eight-year-old daughter. But hope arrives in the form of the Helena Rose, a steamboat she unexpectedly inherits from a distant relative. Jeanne looks forward to a renewed livelihood on the mighty Mississippi, until news comes of another heir, a tough man named Clint Hardin--and a clause in the will that says claimants of the estate must live...