Paul Jenks and his wife Sarah left California with their lovely son David and daughter Ivy and started a farm in his native small town. Sarah is a short-tempered vegetarian, who doesn`t really fit in the agricultural community. Sandy Barlow, a drifting accountant with shaky finances, envies their family happiness, worms her way in -as she does all over town-, fails to impress him with her female charms but pretends her aunt has the same hart disease as Sarah and asks the couple to spring her the money for an operation. When they answer they don`t even have that much, everything is mortgaged, she swears revenge and takes it out on the whole family.