Crisscrossing the Great Lakes onboard her father's freighter ship, the Mary Elise, Elise Wright has grown up cooking and caring for the crew. It is a life she loves. Unlike her estranged sister, Elise has turned down numerous opportunities for a "respectable life" with their wealthy relatives. And now, because of promises she made to her dying mother, she's bound to the ship and her deeply grieving father more than ever.

Hope Flanagan survived the massacre at the Whitman Mission, but at terrible personal cost. Safe now in Oregon City, she lives with her sisters, Grace and Mercy, and Grace's new husband, Alex. Hope's precarious new peace is shattered when those responsible for the massacre are captured and put on trial. She is asked to testify against them, but she's not sure she can bear to relive the events of those horrific days. As Hope struggles to free herself from the pain of her past, Lance Kenner brings an unexpected ray of light into her life.

For Havyn Powell, growing up on her grandfather Chuck Bondrant's dairy outside the 1904 gold-rush boomtown of Nome, Alaska, offered all she needed. She had the love of her mother, two sisters, and grandfather. But now, at 23, Havyn realizes the stability of her life may soon vanish. Havyn is determined to find a way to keep the family together, but her grandfather's health is declining and everyone seems to be holding secrets from each other, including the handsome, dark-haired stranger who recently arrived. 

When Pinkerton agent Helaina Beecham's obsession with capturing a dangerous fugitive dulls her judgment, she is kidnapped and carried off into the wilderness just as an early winter is approaching. Now her only hope is that Jacob Barringer - the man who has captured her heart - will find her before it is too late.

So much has been accomplished. Lillian Walsh has stepped out courageously beyond what she'd ever dreamed of being able to achieve. Two years ago, she was an only child, living in a big house with her adoptive parents. Now, she shares the large home with her newly rediscovered sister, Grace, and the orphaned children to whom Grace has devoted her life. But then the letter arrives - an official complaint revoking the sisters' permission to manage their little children's home.

In Indiana, Ashley Baxter Blake and her husband are about to take an anniversary trip to Paris, but she is hesitant. More than two decades ago, she made her most grievous mistake in that same city. She has never forgiven herself for what happened there, and she still harbors secrets that she’s afraid will come to light. Just before the trip, Ashley gets a call from her niece. Jessie explains that her French boyfriend’s mother remembers working at a bakery with an American named Ashley. “Could that be you?”  

Hamburg 1888: After thirty prosperous years, coffee importer Peter Hansen & Sons faces hard times - and certain bankruptcy - unless three brothers can make savvy moves to save the faltering business after their father’s untimely death. For Robert Hansen, that means meeting changing demands by following the future from Vienna to Africa. He relocates his family to the German colony of Cameroon and takes ownership of a cocoa plantation. With a spirit as adventurous as her father’s, Robert’s fifteen-year-old daughter Luise discovers an exciting new world.

Mags has never forgotten the friendship she forged with two fellow nurses she served with at the beginning of World War I. Haunted by what she experienced during that time, she fears a reunion with her friends would bring back the horror she’s tried so desperately to suppress. Now, with her wedding on the horizon, this should be a joyful time for Mags. But the sudden loss of her mother and the constant doubt she harbours surrounding her fiancé, Harold, are marring her happiness.

The year 1819, Isle of Mull, Scotland: When Allan MacDougall tells his sweetheart, Harriet Campbell, he loves her on the eve of his departure to the New World, it breaks her heart. Because there is no way for her to go with him. She promises to wait for him, even though it could be years before they are reunited. They vow to write, but when crucial letters go astray, they feel further apart than either could have imagined. 

1950. In the wake of the war, Audrey Clarkson leaves her manor house in England for a fresh start in America with her young son. As a widowed war bride, Audrey needs the support of her American in-laws, whom she has never met. But she arrives to find that her longtime friend Eve Dawson has been impersonating her for the past four years. Unraveling this deception will force Audrey and Eve’s secrets - and the complicated history of their friendship - to the surface. 

Robinswood, Co. Waterford, 1939. The once grand house is home to two very different families. Despite delusions of grandeur, Lord and Lady Kenefick and their adult children live a life of decayed opulence as the money needed to keep such a large house and grounds ever dwindles. Meanwhile, the Murphy family, Dermot, Isabella and their three almost grown-up girls, live and work on the estate and do their best to keep everything running smoothly.

Devon, 1918. When Jessie Hale loses her nursing job, she leaves London to become the nurse maid to the Kendle family. On arrival she finds the family in disarray. When their elderly Nanny suffers a bad fall, Jessie has to try to bring the household together. Gradually, Jessie finds her place in their lives. Jessie soon starts to love her life at Kendlebury Hall, but problems arise when her feelings for her employer start to change.... 

Elizabeth Thatcher is young, pretty, cultured, and educated. But when she journeys west to teach school in the foothills of the Canadian Rockies, she's completely unprepared for the conditions she encounters. Still, she's determined to succeed at the formidable task of fitting in with the locals and shaping the hearts and minds of the schoolchildren in her care. 

Abandoned by their parents and left to fight for themselves, headstrong Rosalind Carey has no choice but to take charge of her younger brothers and sister in Devonshire’s grand Rockwood Castle. But their once much-loved home is crumbling like the family that lives within it. Living hand to mouth and desperate to provide for the estate that depends on them, the Carey family are one debt away from ruin. Until the day comes when the dashing Piers Blanchard appears on their doorstep from Cornwall, claiming he is Rosalind’s distant cousin and that Rockwood Castle is his.

Cassandra Blake has raised her three motherless sisters. The girls are the pride of their book-loving, impractical father, and not in a hurry to marry. Then the American Civil War cuts off supplies of cotton to Lancashire, the mills fall silent and there is no work. There is a stark choice: stay and risk starvation or pack up and begin again elsewhere. Cassandra has fallen in love with Reece Gregory, but he can't support a wife. When he's given the chance to start a new life in Western Australia, he seizes the opportunity, promising to send for her.