Parrish McLean is at the age where he is now considered a man, but he does not know what being a man means nor has he had the freedom to explore how to become a man. Solely to get him away from a dead end job which he would probably stay with purely out of loyalty, his long widowed mother, Ellen McLean, moves them from Boston to the Connecticut River Valley, where she has taken a job on the tobacco farm of Sala Post. The job is to assist Sala's headstrong and motherless daughter Alison Post with her formal debut. Getting a job as a farmhand on the Post farm despite knowing nothing about growing tobacco, Parrish quickly discovers that he would like to get into the tobacco business as a career. Being ensconced in all aspects of the Post farm, both Ellen and Parrish get caught up in the professional battle between Sala and his main competitor in the area, Judd Raike. Sala's is one of the few small family farms left in the valley, those long gone having been swallowed up by Judd's corporation, he a cutthroat man who has a win at any cost mentality. Parrish also gets caught up in a series of sexual relationships which directly or indirectly are part of that Post-Raike battle, namely: with Alison; with Lucy, a farmhand who was already in a relationship, that man's name which she is reluctant to divulge; and with Judd's daughter, Paige.
—Huggo