Love Comes Softly

IT WAS MARTY CLARIDGE'S DREAM TO BUILD A NEW LIFE ON THE FRONTIER WITH HER HUSBAND. BUT WHEN THE COURAGEOUS PIONEER WOMAN IS SUDDENLY WIDOWED, SHE'S OFFERED A NEW OPPORTUNITY - TO MARRY A WIDOWER IN A MARRIAGE OF CONVENIENCE THAT LEADS TO UNEXPECTED LOVE.

Writer/director Michael Landon Jr. continues in his famous father's footsteps by creating moral family entertainment set in the early days of the American prairie. Stubborn Marty Claridge (Katherine Heigl, ) travels west with her new husband--but after they find a beautiful patch of land, her husband dies in an accident before they've even started building. A man named Clark (Dale Midkiff, ) makes a proposal: If Marty will enter into a platonic marriage with him, he'll pay for her passage back east in the spring. What Clark needs is a mother, however temporary, for his willful tomboy daughter Missie (Skye McCole Bartusiak, ). Missie fights Marty's presence fiercely while Clark, though supportive, speaks few words, and Marty suspects she's made a terrible mistake--but time reveals otherwise. , based on the popular Christian novel by Janette Oke, is a romance, but Landon carefully avoids any bodice-ripping histrionics. Problems get solved perhaps a little too easily, but the movie is cleanly written, pleasantly understated, and respectful to its characters. For many viewers, will be a welcome change from overheated secular love stories.