Sara Witherspoon is a beautiful and brilliant research microbiologist who calls herself "a crackerjack gene-splicer;" she's about to marry Bruce Rule, a high-flying commodities broker. But while visiting St. Elmo's Fire, Vermont, Sara encounters an anomaly in the space time continuum and falls through a crack in time to the 1870's gold rush town of Bury-Me-Quick Colorado, where she meets Clay Dunhill, a soft-spoken, gentlemanly outlaw awaiting trial for murder. At first, Sara thinks she's hallucinating - prenuptial jitters, stress or an endocrine system malfunction - but she quickly finds out...