Elsie Dinsmore: a life of faith

In the 1840's, eight-year-old heiress Elsie Dinsmore has only her Christian faith and the hope of love from the father she has never met to sustain her while living on a southern plantation with relatives who care little for her and disapprove of her strong religious principles.

During her tenth summer, Elsie is reunited with old friends, travels throughout New England, and introduces her father to the woman who will become her new mother.

Elsie, now twenty-one years old, wishes to marry an old friend but her father decrees she must first learn to manage her inheritance, including her mother's Louisiana sugar plantation and its slaves.