Tragedy strikes the New York-based Cardinal family when their car is involved in a terrible accident. Although 12 year-old Louisa Mae and 7 year-old Oscar survive, their father is killed and their mother is left in a coma. It would seem that their world of security and comfort has been lost for ever until their great-grandmother Louisa May agrees to bring up the children on her farm in Virginia. Soon they adapt to the strange-ways of country folk and they gradually re-build their lives. Amanda, their mother, however, is not responding to treatment but benevolent lawyer Cotton Longfellow makes it his mission to talk her out of her coma. Meanwhile natural gas is discovered on the family land and a prospecting company will stop at nothing, even murder, to gain the rights to purchase the property . . .
