Tom Bates has returned to Jordan, Ohio, after 18 years, rekindling the gossip that he fathered an illegitimate baby before he left. Mary Hagen, the now-grown subject of those rumors, soon finds herself an unwitting target for the town's malicious whispers and lies. So when her mother dies without explaining her past, a tormented Mary turns to Tom for the truth about a scandal that ruined her life before it ever began.