Several local men of questionable integrity want to buy her property, but Charity refuses to sell. She despised her late husband and bitterly regrets leaving Boston where she was among the social elite. In one of those strange coincidences that only occur in fiction, Rafe's enemies are Charity's enemies. You can pretty much guess the rest. Conflict abounds in this story, but most of it is the kind that evolves from bad temper, bad motives, or characters that are bad to the bone.
Charity does a lot of yelling at Rate to get out.
Rafe does a lot of anguishing over his inability to love. The bad guys do a lot of lurking and threatening. One of the bad guys agonizes over his sinful past. There's very little forward movement in the story. The plot is composed of strung-together episodes with lots of sneering, snarling, and angst, but there's no sense of progression towards an inevitable conclusion.