When she is ten, Ruth Ann Landry joins her mother as a maidservant for a wealthy Seattle family. By the time she's seventeen, they've moved into the house and she's become a mistress to her employer. While accompanying the family on vacation, she sees an opportunity to start a new life, and leaves. Rut eventually finds solace in the mountains where she stays in one of the cabins owned by a man who becomes part of her future.