Eliza and Anna are a generation apart in age but are bound together by polygamy and the control of their husband, Joseph Brown. When Anna, the young second wife, wants to break free from her abusive marriage, it is only her sister wife who can make that possible.

Joseph Brown is the proud, strong-willed patriarch of his family in the new Mormon Zion. When his wife, Eliza, falls into a suicidal depression after the birth of her eighth baby, Joseph brings home fourteen-year-old Anna to live with them as a mother's helper. Joseph is drawn to the beautiful teenager and within months makes her his second wife. Eliza is devastated but has no power to oppose her husband. The women build a difficult new relationship as sister wives who must share everything, until Joseph is imprisoned for polygamy and Anna must go into hiding. Separated from Eliza and Joseph, Anna yearns to live beyond the confines of her life, especially when her feelings for a young horse doctor move beyond friendship.