Addie aka Julia, 26 years old - shipwrecked when she was 2 years old, raised by the lighthouse keeper husband/wife - a mysterious benefactor paid them for her care and their secrecy... her father died, her mother, who was never warm to her, is even colder... she sews, she heals, she took a correspondence course for her degree, she is isolated, she loves her dog Gideon, she wears a locket that had her grandmother's face in it, with a steady belief in God's providence... until her uncle Driscoll comes to the lighthouse... and she finds out that her parents are quite wealthy (well her father anyway - her mother died in the boat wreck)...

She goes to the Eaton household with her uncle, under the guise of governess for her nephew, Edward (5 years old / with epilepsy)... her half sister died in an accident, and John (her brother-in-law) is a Lietenant in the navy... He is home on leave, and now has a desk job... and Addie is immediately attracted to him...

She works on unraveling the mystery about her mother, finding clues that her mother found out some awful secret before she left with her daughter... and growing closer to John & his son - a gentle, respectful, passionate love... and wanting to fit in & please her family / father , and so she starts to compromise when she feels God calling her in one direction...

it ends up that Henry (her father) - a commoner, like Laura's, his wife, money a little too much - so he poisoned her father, makingit look like a heartattack... Her father's will actually read the inheritance went from Laura, to her daughter (Julia), to his other daughter's son (Edward)... the inheritance did not go to Henry... and to protect his interest, he hid the will, paid his brother-in-law (Driscoll)'s gambling debts, and he kept Laura in an asylum that he owned, saying she had killed her father, and needed to be kept drugged... Addie/Julia and John rescue her mother, turn to Lord Carrington, a man who loved Laura and in fact was the one who protected Addie by keeping her in the lighthouse, fight off her father, and save her mother...

The story ends with her simple wedding (she gets to go barefooted, by the lighthouse), and an agreement with her husband to sell the mansion to a group that wants to turn it to a sanotorium - and to sell a land/forest to a park developer to pay off the investments of those who lost money in the Eaton Bank that her father had squandered... and the knowledge that God would provide...