In the year 1912, nineteen-year-old Christy Huddleston leaves Asheville, North Carolina, to teach school in the Smoky Mountains - and comes to know and love the resilient people of the region, with their fierce pride, their dark superstitions, their terrible poverty, and their yearning for beauty and truth. But her faith will be severely challenged by trial and tragedy, and through two remarkable men - a preacher torn by doubt and a doctor whose wounded soul needs healing - she will grapple with the nature of love.