Norman Foster ("Journey into Fear"/The Great Sex War"/"The Green Hornet") directs a fine Western that tells of hearty pioneers who made a home in the Ohio wilderness and conquered both nature and the unfriendly Shawnee Indians. It plays out as a romantic adventure and is written by Waldo Salt, who bases it on the story "Rachel" by Howard Fast.

 

In the mid-1800s, Big Davey Harvey (William Holden), an Ohio backwoodsman farmer living in isolation from the stockade, is all shook up to find himself a widower as his lovely Susan just passed on and left him with the responsibility of raising his young son Davey (Gary Gray). Feeling the need to have a woman look after the boy, to keep him from being all woodsy and uncultured,  and to also do the household chores, Big Davey journeys to the stockade to hire a live-in housekeeper; but is told by Parson Jackson (Tom Tully) it wouldn't look right for a man and woman to share the same house and the parson talks him into buying for eighteen dollars a bonds-woman named Rachel (Loretta Young) and making it all good by marrying her.

It helps that Rachel is a knockout, can cook and is refined. Back in their small log cabin, Big Davey is awkward about the marriage and chooses to treat the hard-working Rachel as merely a housekeeper and someone who gives the boy Bible and school lessons without fulfilling his marriage vows to consummate the marriage in a biblical manner.The boy in the meantime,so much misses his loving mom, that he unfairly treats the saintly Rachel in a gruff manner. It seems the grief is too great for the Harvey men to love Rachel properly, as they are still trying to deal with their loss.