Christy returns to Cutter Gap with her adult daughter, Catherine, and narrates her life as a young schoolteacher. In this recollection, typhoid sweeps through the cove. Christy's faith is severely tested. Christy, Miss Alice, Dr. MacNeill, and the mission preacher, David Grantland, do what they can to save the rest of the inflicted. Christy's feelings for David grow when he falls ill with the disease himself. Ultimately Christy finds herself engaged to the handsome minister, but discovers she may have inadvertently lost the friendship of another man whose strong affection for her is undeniable.
