Evelyn Turner is determined to work at her physician father’s side as he opens a hospital for Minneapolis’s poor. But when nursing makes her physically ill, she faces an impossible choice between the promises she’s made and her own limitations.

Maxwell Garrison helps manage his father’s investments through the financial crisis of 1893, with special interest in their sawmill businesses. At a Turner family fundraiser, he is horrified when he overhears his father and other mill owners plotting to commit arson and insurance fraud. When Evie and Max meet at the same fundraiser, a connection sparks between them. As their interests in each other grow, they confide their secrets and agree to guard each other’s trust.

Then a suspicious and devastating fire sets Minneapolis ablaze, and Max and Evie fear the worst. Can they build a life together amid the ashes of deception?