The impact of the Civil War on lovers. Inman is not the man he used to be, as wounded in battle he slowly makes his way home to North Carolina. His sweetheart, Ada, too has changed, no longer a flighty belle but a hard-working farm woman. Will love be the same?

Inman, a wounded soldier, walks away from the front during the Civil War to return to his sweetheart, Ada, who desperately works to revive a struggling farm.