1890 Dallas, Texas With nowhere else to go, seventeen-year-old orphan Maggie Murphy finds herself at a marriage agency. Trying to make the best of the situation, she goes to dine with a client-and somehow ends up married to another man at the end of the night. What was his name? James. James Anderson. She hoped with all her might she had remembered his name correctly. Neither she nor James have any desire to be married-certainly not to each other-but the sham of weddedness has released her from the marriage agency and landed her at a hat shop, abandoned by her husband, with orders to change her name, deny their acquaintance, and successfully run the shop he purchased on a drinking binge. After years of growing the Hat Emporium into a shop any woman would be proud of, and fed up with the man who has been receiving much of the profit he doesn't deserve, Maggie petitions the distant James for full ownership of the place. The answer she receives is not only unexpected but also a lesson in human nature and God's generosity.