While still mourning the loss of her husband and daughter, recently widowed Ellie King (Natalie Hall) visits her brother Aaron Davis (Greg Vaughan) and his children for Christmas. Ellie does her best to enjoy the holidays, even making new friends with Mrs. Thompson (JoBeth Williams), a local shop keeper, and handsome admirer Deputy Strode (Dylan Bruce). Settling in nicely with her brother’s family, Ellie also meets Erik (Bobby Campo), a young man abandoned by his outlaw father whom Aaron has taken in as one of his own. When Aaron travels out of town to purchase adjacent land for farming, Ellie agrees to watch his children, but the season’s festivities are threatened when Aaron goes missing. A Hallmark Channel made for television movie set in the 1800s in the .
Part of the [Love Comes Softly](http://amzn.to/1RzwTyY) series: In the family-entertainment tradition of his multi-talented father Michael Landon, writer/director Michael Landon Jr. offered this made-for-cable frontier drama, adapted from a novel by Janet Oke. En route to her new home in the West, Marty Claridge (Katherine Heigl) suddenly finds herself a widow, with no roof over her head or means to support herself. At the gentle prodding of her settler friends Ben and Sarah Graham (Corbin Bernsen, Theresa Russell), Marty accepts the marriage proposal of taciturn widower Clark Davis (Dale Midkiff). It is strictly a business arrangement, with no romance or cohabitation involved; Marty will act as housekeeper to Davis and as teacher and surrogate mother for Clark’s sullen nine-year-old daughter Missy (Skye McCole Bartusiak), and in return she will receive food and lodging. Pragmatists both, Marty and Clark assume that they will dissolve their marriage of convenience when the spring thaw comes…but that isn’t how things turn out. Love Comes Softly first aired in 2003, on the Hallmark Channel.
Starring Katherine Heigl, Dale Midkiff, Corbin Bernsen, Natalie Hall.
Note: The Christian faith based series was adapted from the book of the same title by Janette Oke (born 1935), She is a Canadian author and pioneer of inspirational fiction. Her books are often set in a pioneer era and centered on female protagonists.