Emily Walters can be an American widow living a peaceful, uneventful presence in the idyllic Hampstead Village of London, when she meets Donald Horner, local recluse. For 17 years, Donald has lived--exceptionally yet peacefully--in a hut near the edge of this forest. When Emily learns his home may be the prospective of developers that will stop at nothing to remove him his possessions and saving Donald becomes her assignment. Despite refusals for help and his gruff exterior, Emily is attracted to him--as he is to her--and what begins as a charitable cause evolves in to a relationship which will grow as the bulldozers close in.