Emery Prometer is an itinerant bush worker living in a logging community in a rural area of the Ottawa Valley. He doesn't make enough money to support his large family but he is too proud to except government handouts and thus his family must endure the hardships. Despite the isolation and deprivation, his family has nothing but compassion for his tough self-reliance and hard-drinking lifestyle. Eventually his oldest daughter Rosie decides she must break the cycle of poverty by leaving home, getting an education and then a job for a better future.