The year is 1835, and Carolina Adams finds herself enchanted by an unlikely suitor: the railroad. Frustrated by society's expectations upon her gender, she longs to study more masculine subjects and is thrilled when her father grants her a tutor. James Baldwin arrives to serve as Carolina's teacher, but of more importance, he is to court Carolina's beautiful older sister, Virginia. Will expectations - and Virginia's Southern charm - elicit the hoped-for proposal? Or will James and Carolina dare to acknowledge the mutual interests and feelings growing between them?

With the loss of her first true love, Carolina Adams finds life at the family plantation nearly unbearable. Desperate to escape, she moves to Baltimore to become a nanny to Victoria, a little girl whose mother has died. After breaking his wedding engagement with Virginia Adams, Carolina's older sister, James Baldwin immerses himself in work for the B&O Railroad, the other passion in his life besides Carolina. But when a shocking business proposal is given to Carolina, James and Carolina seem destined to be apart. Can they dare to dream their aspirations for love might come true?

When James Baldwin takes a new position with the B&O Railroad, he and Carolina decide to move their growing family from Baltimore to a small rural town in the Allegheny Mountains. Carolina's stepdaughter, Victoria, becomes enthralled with handsome Kiernan, an Irish railroad worker. But will the upper-class Baldwins even consider him as a suitor for their daughter? And when tensions rise among the workers, can James stop a destructive plan before it's too late?