After Doc Baker gives ailing widow Julia Sanderson a disheartening health prognosis, the woman scrambles to find a home for her three young children.
Grace and Isaiah Edwards’ adopted, John receives a four-year scholarship to a university in Chicago. Isaiah would rather have a son to share his farming lifestyle. John and Mary have immediate marriage plans that will not be possible if John decides to follow his ultimate dream. Torn between two worlds, John is forced to make the most difficult decision of his life.
A family of Jewish refugees comes to Walton's Mountain from Nazi Germany, and the family members worry that the persecution they have suffered will continue in their new country. But when John-Boy arranges for a rabbi to perform a bar mitzvah ceremony, the family regains its dignity and finds a home in America.
When Charles gets the opportunity to visit Chicago on business, he hopes to turn it into a romantic getaway for him and Caroline, but he ends up escorting Mary, who longs to visit her fiancé John. As father and daughter navigate a city that is very different from their simplistic Walnut Grove, unexpected revelations are on the way for both of them.
Isaiah and Grace Edwards are both delighted with their new family, but trouble soon begins between Isaiah and his oldest adopted son John. Isaiah does not understand the boy's interest in books and poetry, and he would much prefer a son with whom he could farm and hunt. That clearly is not the kind of life John enjoys, but Isaiah keeps pushing it.
