Allise, a Quaker school marm from Pennsylvania, confronts racism, religion and provincialism in the South. Her husband rapes a black girl and a son is born. Her unfaithful husband, a southern farmer, is killed in WWII. Allise takes in the black girl and her son, causing conflicts within the family and the town. Allise finds happiness in a second marriage but is estranged from her children. Her daughter, a drug-using flower child, is killed in an auto accident in California. Allise's crowning achievement is the education of the half-white son and her students' overcoming racial attitudes.