An orphaned girl is being raised in the Limberlost (timbered swamp in Indiana) by her aunt, who hates her because the girl's mother married the man that the aunt loved. The girl's existence is close to being servitude bondage, and her only companions are the birds and the animals of the forest. She meets and falls in love with a young man whose ambition is to be a lawyer. But her aunt is arranging for her to be married to the wealthiest man in the Limberlost, a drunken, coarse bully.