In Bangor, Maine, back in 1824, a cruel girl named Jenny Hager pushes a frightened Ephraim Poster into the river, fully prepared to let him drown. She is about to abandon him when Judge Henry Saladine happens by, and Jenny dives after the boy to claim the rescue, seizing credit for saving a life to cover her calculated cruelty.
Years pass, and Jenny has grown into a beautiful but heartless, manipulative young woman. Her father, an abusive, drunken widower, whips her after learning of her flirtation with a sailor. She begins quietly plotting to marry the town’s wealthiest man, the much older timber baron Isaiah Poster, while his mild-mannered son Ephraim is away at college in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Isaiah is unkind to Ephraim upon his return, unaware that the boy and Jenny—now his wife—were once sweethearts and that Jenny is once again toying with Ephraim’s affections. Isaiah’s mind is focused on the town’s growing lawlessness, as lumberjacks run amok, roughing up women and even killing a judge, reinforcing his belief that Bangor needs a police force. When illness slows Isaiah, Jenny quietly hopes he will die. After recovering, he decides to travel to his lumber camps, and Jenny presses Ephraim to arrange his death, saying, “I want you to return alone.”
> I want you to return alone.
In the rapids, an overturned canoe sends both men into danger, and Isaiah drowns. Ephraim, who is terrified of water, cannot summon the strength to save him. He returns home a changed man, a hopeless drunk who despises Jenny and speaks openly of her deceit. Ephraim’s supervisor, John Evered, comes to confront him, unsure what to believe about Jenny’s scheming.
Jenny, meanwhile, seduces Evered, who is engaged to Jenny’s best friend, Meg Saladine. The pair’s forbidden affair explodes amid a thunderstorm, and Evered soon finds himself torn between his new wife and the life he planned with Meg. After their wedding, Evered longs for children, but Jenny discovers she cannot bear any. She confesses this to her husband, and Evered responds with a steadfast declaration of love.
A traveling evangelist, Lincoln Pittridge, arrives and delivers a fiery sermon that shakes Jenny to her core, prompting a blunt confession to Evered that every accusation Ephraim had spoken about her was true. Evered withdraws to the lumber camps to sort through his feelings, while Meg travels to the camps to see him. Meg urges him to return to his wife, but Jenny races to the cabin where Evered and Meg are together. She arrives with her carriage, racing toward them in a frenzy, and the vehicle slams into a rock and tumbles from a cliff, leaving Jenny mortally wounded.
In her final moments, Jenny’s passionate feelings for Evered come to the surface, revealing the depth of the love she has sought to deny, and Evered, having learned the truth and the power of genuine love, faces a sober, if bittersweet, end to their doomed story.
