Set in the Depression era on the brink of World War 2, just-paroled Will Parker (Christopher Reeve) looks for work, and answers an ad from widowed farmer/mother Elly Dinsmore (Deborah Raffin, also a co-writer on this one). She’s known as a recluse and is looking for a “husband” to help her tend her farm, especially since she is pregnant.
Elly warns Will to keep away from the bee colony, it was managed by her dead husband and she considers it a danger now, but Will insists it can be a moneymaker and defies her. He becomes part of the family, first in a marriage of convenience, but then as these films often do, it turns into a more meaningful relationship with Elly.
The sheriff (JT Walsh), local waitress/loose woman (Helen Shaver) and other narrow-minded citizens make trouble for Will. Nina Foch plays a kindly librarian who knew Elly when she was younger and continues to be a helpful friend. In an unusually non-villainous role, Lloyd Bochner is a lawyer who helps them when Will is arrested for a serious crime.
Reeve plays Will really as a babe in the woods kind of character, he’s polite and kind which is in opposition to what he was convicted for. But he’s not stupid or illiterate. Raffin doesn’t play Elly as a crazy recluse, although that’s the way the town considers her, but as a normal misunderstood woman.
Usually anything that blares “made for TV,” especially if it is based on a book, I stay away from as my tastes do not often run to "top ten" of anything. It does have its moments of saccharine and expected plots/characters (the whole plot itself is pretty standard in a romance novel sort of way, including the happy ending), but the two actors do a good job and they probably don’t often get a lot of the credit they deserve.
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