Lyman Ward moves into Zodiac Cottage, determined to research his grandmother Susan's life from his wheelchair.

Susan Burling meets Oliver Ward at a New York party; Oliver leaves for California the following week.

Susan and Oliver marry and travel West together so Oliver can pursue engineering work.

Susan arrives at the New Almaden mining cottage and begins adjusting to isolated frontier life.

Oliver quarrels with mine manager Mr. Kendall and quits his job, forcing the family to relocate.

Oliver and Susan separate while he searches for work in Deadwood, relying on Susan's writing income.

Oliver and Susan reunite and move into a Leadville cabin, where they first meet Frank Sargent.

Oliver turns down a coveted government survey position and takes the Adelaide mine managership instead.

Oliver and Susan travel to Mexico together to inspect a promising mine prospect.

Oliver's pessimistic report on the Mexican mine ends any chance of the family settling there.

Oliver reveals his grand Idaho irrigation project to Susan, who reluctantly agrees to move again.

The Susan Canal opens successfully with water flowing through it for the first time.

Agnes drowns in the canal and Frank shoots himself in the head a few days later.

Oliver tears up the rose garden with his bare hands and rides away, beginning a two-year separation.

Conrad Prager convinces Oliver to manage the Zodiac mine; Oliver and Susan reunite and live there until death.

Lyman Ward, a disabled historian confined to a wheelchair after his amputation and abandoned by his wife, moves into his ancestral home to research his grandmother Susan's life. Susan, a New York artist, marries engineer Oliver Ward and follows him into a series of rough mining camps and frontier settlements where she struggles with loneliness, financial ruin, and repeated uprooting. Oliver pursues one ambitious project after another, each ending in failure, as the couple moves from California to Colorado to Idaho while their marriage quietly deteriorates. The Idaho irrigation project represents Oliver's greatest dream and most crushing collapse, ending in financial ruin and personal tragedy when their daughter Agnes drowns and Frank Sargent shoots himself. Oliver and Susan separate for two years before reuniting at the Zodiac mine, living together until their deaths in a marriage hollowed out by grief and distrust. Through tracing their trials, Lyman comes to understand that forgiveness and endurance may be the only path forward for his own broken life.

The essential arc of two marriages tested by the frontier.

Rodman visits Lyman and tries to convince him to sell Zodiac Cottage and move in with family.

Lyman hires Ada's daughter Shelly Rasmussen to sort through Susan's papers after his original helper fails.

Susan tells Augusta about her engagement to Oliver; Augusta reacts with shock and accusation.

Oliver spends the train ticket money on the cottage; Susan buys her own tickets and arrives anxious and ashamed.

Augusta's baby dies of diphtheria, devastating Susan who cannot afford to travel back East to comfort her.

Thomas Hudson asks to publish Susan's letters; she writes a detailed article about New Almaden mining life.

Susan gives birth to an eleven-pound boy, and the entire mining camp celebrates the arrival.

Conrad Prager overrules Mr. Kendall and takes Susan on a tour deep underground inside the New Almaden mine.

Oliver finally perfects his hydraulic cement formula but abandons the invention without ever patenting it.

A delivery man brings twenty-four canaries to Shelly from her estranged husband; she immediately sends them back.

Susan returns East expecting to see Thomas and Augusta, only to learn they have gone abroad on doctor's orders.

Oliver and Frank carry Pricey's broken body into the Leadville cabin; Susan screams when she sees his face.

Oliver rescues Ollie from the canyon suspension bridge while Susan watches in terror, and Susan gives birth shortly after.

Shelly tells Lyman she is leaving his employment to join the hippie commune, despite his offer to stay.

Lyman has a vivid dream in which Ellen arrives at the house and he collapses with humiliation before her.

While Lyman's son Rodman pressures him to abandon his independence, Lyman assembles a makeshift support team and settles into the work of reconstructing Susan's past from her letters and papers. Susan's early years out West are shaped by small but significant episodes: the shock of Augusta's grief, the unexpected joy of pregnancy and motherhood, and the underground world of the mine she is finally allowed to see. As Susan's artistic output keeps the family solvent through repeated financial failures, Oliver quietly perfects and then abandons a potentially lucrative cement invention without ever protecting it. The Leadville years bring danger and intimacy in equal measure, culminating in the harrowing night Oliver and Frank carry Pricey home broken and unconscious. Back in the present, Shelly's disruptive arrival and eventual departure bracket the entire research project, and Lyman's climactic dream about Ellen forces him to confront the emotional stakes of everything he has been studying.

The overlooked moments that shaped Susan's world and Lyman's research.

Lyman reveals that Ellen left him for the surgeon who amputated his leg, departing while he recovered.

Oliver returns from five years in California and Susan agrees at the ferry landing to marry him.

Susan realizes she has missed her last two periods and understands she is pregnant.

Oliver tells Susan the mine is "wormy with fear and hate" and reveals his deep conflict with Mr. Kendall.

Mrs. Elliot tells Susan bluntly that Oliver believes Susan considers herself his superior.

Rodman visits Lyman and reveals that Ellen has been asking after him and is having a difficult time.

Oliver tells Susan he has been invited to join the government survey, which would take him away from the family.

The smell of riding clothes in Mexico floods Susan with the memory of Frank's kiss and confession of love.

Oliver comes home drunk and tells Susan the canal is dead to all investors; Susan storms back to the house.

Susan writes to Augusta admitting that her marriage "is not the marriage I dreamed of, not the marriage it was."

Frank visits Susan alone on the Fourth of July, admits he still loves her, and asks her to leave with him.

Oliver kisses Susan after Frank's departure and her cheek burns as though touched with acid.

Lyman concludes that Agnes' drowning likely triggered Frank's suicide and confirms his grandmother's probable affair.

Lyman tells Ellen in his dream that Susan "broke something she couldn't mend," then breaks down weeping and leaves the room.

Lyman wakes from his dream in soaked pajamas and wonders whether he is man enough to forgive Ellen.

Lyman's investigation is shadowed from the start by his own wound: Ellen left him for the surgeon who removed his leg, a betrayal he cannot bring himself to forgive or examine directly. As he reconstructs Susan's past, a parallel series of quiet ruptures accumulates, from Oliver's private sense of inferiority to Susan's growing awareness that her marriage has become something she never intended. The revelation of Frank's feelings for Susan, preserved in the scent of riding clothes recalled in Mexico, opens a hidden current that runs beneath the entire Idaho period. By 1890 the current becomes a crisis: Frank's July Fourth visit, Oliver's silent fury, and Susan's burning shame after a single kiss all converge into the catastrophe Lyman has been dreading. Piecing together what he cannot prove, Lyman finally names the probable truth about Agnes, Frank, and Susan's guilt, then breaks down explaining it to Ellen in his dream. Waking alone, he asks himself whether he can exceed his grandfather's cold endurance and choose forgiveness instead.