In the year 1912, nineteen-year-old Christy Huddleston leaves home to teach school in the Smoky Mountains. There she comes to know and love the wild mountain people with their fierce pride, dark superstitions, terrible poverty, and their yearning for beauty and truth. Christy finds her faith severely challenged in these primitive surroundings, and when she confronts two young men of unique strength and needs, she also finds her own growing yearnings challenged by love.