"I had a dream," Magdalena Roush whispered. "But this reality is something else." Two years ago she'd left Mescal Flats, N. M. to go East and seek her physician certificate. Now Lena has returned, full of high hopes to establish her doctor's office and show her girlhood love, cowboy Theron Barnes, ten years older than she, how she's all grown up. She's returned home, but she's not prepared for the challenge of being confronted by an angry midwife and warned not to steal the woman's patients. She's devastated when Theron raises an invisible wall between himself and the town's new lady doctor. Her disillusionment is complete when she loses her first patient, a teenaged burn victim. Where have all her dreams disappeared to? Can Lena find them again?