Maria, a young woman, living with her parents on a remote farm in harsh, but picturesque northern Quebec, has three suitors: a steady and dull farmer, Eutrope, the Americanized and wealthy Lorenzo, who has made his fortune in Boston, and François Paradis, a rough and courageous logger who captures her heart despite the warnings of her parents and the village priest. For a year, marked by seasonal change and tinged with the strangeness of Indians and the demons of the woods, Maria works and prays, struggling with hard decisions to make. The death of her mother and the tragic disappearance of François Paradis will seal her fate. Three film adaptations have been made of the famous Louis Hémon novel, this one made in 1983, is the most recent.