 An orphaned girl is being raised in the Limberlost (timbered swamp in the American south)by her aunt, who hates her because the girl s mother married the man that the aunt loved. The girl s existence is close to being servitude bondage, and her only companions are the birds and the animals of the forest. She meets and falls in love with a young man whose ambition is to be a lawyer. But her aunt is arranging for her to be married to the wealthiest man in the Limberlost, a drunken, coarse bully.