Set in the early 20th century, Chris Guthrie, a farmers daughter in north-eastern Scotland struggles for love amid hardship and family misfortune. After her mother, a poverty-stricken woman broken by repeated childbirths, poisons herself and her baby twins the resilient young Chris must manage the farm in her absence. When her father has a stroke and becomes bedridden, though also eager for an incestuous relationship, she is left on the land by her closest ally and friend, her brother. Finally she finds love, only to wave her new husband off to the Great War. She remains on the farm, connected to a land about to be changed forever by the onset of technology and war.