The year is 1885 and all May Jakobsson wants is a home of her own and a woman to love. Leaving behind her poor immigrant family, she claims her one hundred and sixty acres under the Homestead Act in Dakota Territory. Life on the farm is lonely and there seems no hope of meeting the right woman, or any woman with her inclinations. That is, until an itinerant seamstress arrives in town. When wealthy Boston socialite Temperance Lowell decides to take her sewing machine and travel the rails staying in different towns, she is seeking adventure while escaping Boston where the woman she was having an affair with is getting married. The last thing she expects is to meet a tall, shy woman wearing men's clothes to whom she is instantly attracted. Not only does their attachment cause an uproar in the town of Livingstone, especially among the men who were already hostile to a woman like May, and were more than interested in the beautiful and elegant Temperance, but it confuses May who, in her own words, is "as common as the dirt I dig." Temperance, a little older and very sure of herself, knows May is the woman for her. Can they make a life together in a rough town among farming folk? Will their love survive the challenges thrown their way?