Under remarkable circumstances, Maggie Coburn, child of a desperately poor Scottish shepherd, moves with her family to the mountain farmland of Northern Ireland in 1854. Her journey to the Legananny begins a long, secret friendship with a soldier of the Scots Fusilier Guards, the future 5th Earl of Annesley. What expectation could Maggie, the lovely crippled maid of Legananny, have of being wife and mother, in the harsh conditions and superstitions of rural County Down? Would Joseph, the wild Irish boy who claims to love her, consent to be shackled to a wife who cannot walk or help with his farm or children? Would the powerful nobleman she loves, forsake his social and political responsibilities, to take a tenant farmer's daughter to wed? Maggie Coburn, lives her life full out with the courage, bruises and triumphs born of a intrepid, determined and hopeful spirit.