Strong-willed Southern belle Mary Bullitt abandons her life of luxury in Louisville, Kentucky, when she marries General Henry Atkinson and accompanies him to his outpost on the Mississippi. Nothing has prepared her for marriage to this attractive older man -- or for the realities of frontier living. Conditions are primitive, Mary knows virtually nothing about her husband, and the threat of attack from Indians is constant. A rough and resourceful general, Henry is engaged in a long and historic clash with a great Native American leader, and his deeply conflicted feelings about Indians mirror those he and his wife have for each other.