The Cabin

In the third of The Manhattan Stories, it's 1930, and the Sierra Nevada Mountains are home to a town of renegade Mormons. On Nancy's 18th birthday, her father tells her she must marry her cousin Abner, the town's blacksmith. He's already married to three other women, one of them her younger sister.

Terrified of what being married to Abner would mean, Nancy runs away and gets lost in the woods. Hungry and cold, she finds a seemingly deserted cabin and takes shelter. When she meets Jake, the man who owns it, she must decide if he is a man she can trust. She has nowhere else to go except home to marry Abner. At first reluctant to let her stay, Jake finally agrees. Tired of living alone in the wilderness, he is willing to wait for Nancy to learn to care for him. As they slowly get to know one another, she learns to love him. She expects to spend her life there, but Abner has other ideas. His rage drives him to murder, and he sets out to kill not only Nancy, but Jake as well, and almost succeeds.

Thinking they will only be safe in one place, Jake takes Nancy to his childhood home, Manhattan, Kansas. They aren't there very long before Nancy discovers their stalker has followed them across the country. She knows that sooner or later, someone is going to die. The only question is, which one of them is it going to be?