Considered an outsider by the residents of Cutter Gap, North Carolina native Christy is beloved as a teacher but has begun to stir up conflict with her pleas for progress and stories of an outside world of skyscrapers and modern conveniences. When a free-spirited woman aviator crash lands in Cutter Gap, the attention is taken off Christy... until a series of robberies occur. Believing the thieves would never have come if it weren't for the new road Christy had built, the town unites against her. Faced with this series of setbacks, Christy contemplates returning home to North Carolina, but is persuaded to stay when she realizes she has much more to learn about her new friends... and herself.