On a balmy midsummer's evening in 1923, a young woman - foreign, dishevelled and heavily pregnant - is found unconscious just off the railway tracks in the tiny logging community of Woody Creek. The town midwife, Gertrude Foote, is roused from her bed when the woman is brought to her door. Try as she might, Gertrude is unable to save her, but the baby lives. Gertrude's daughter Amber - who has recently lost a son in childbirth - and her husband Norman take the child in. Loved by some but scorned by more, including her stepmother and sister, baby Jenny survives her childhood and grows into an exquisite and talented young woman. But who were her parents? And why does she so strongly resemble an old photograph of Gertrude's philandering husband?