1844: On her eighteenth birthday, Catherine Ann Moore is betrothed to Tom Fisher, a carpenter's apprentice, who gives her a handmade engraved wooden box as an engagement gift. But when Tom begins listening to the Mormon missionaries who are preaching in town, Catherine's father, the village vicar, forbids her from marrying him-and from having any dealings with this strange religion she's increasingly drawn to. Unwilling to part with either, Catherine makes the painful choice to be baptized against her father's wishes. She then departs for Zion with Tom and his family, leaving her sorrowing parents behind and carrying an ache in her heart. Colorado, present day: Real estate broker Abigail Peters loves her boyfriend, Scott, a successful lawyer who adores her completely, but when he asks her to marry him, she's filled with uncertainty. Needing some breathing room, Abby travels alone to her late grandmother's home in St. George, Utah, to prepare the vacant house for sale. But when an old friend introduces her to Blake Matthews, a young Mormon doctor whose goodness softens her long-inactive Mormon faith, Abby is more confused than ever. And when their friendship grows into something more, she faces a choice that seems almost impossible- until she finds an engraved wooden box in her grandmother's attic that holds echoes from the past and promises for the future.