Doc Martin, the sole physician in a depressed Oregon mill town, looks after women making parachutes in a local factory. One, under threat of losing her job, becomes pregnant and turns to the doctor for help. He knows that the father, a foreman, has a contagious disease. When more young women are menaced, Doc and his wife, Charlotte, attempt to intervene. Sheriff Walker cooperates and seeks their aid in a sadistic murder case. Other murders, grizzly, baffling, also engage the couple. Suspects include the foreman's wife, her lover, and a colorful drifter. Doc and Charlotte are distressed when...

April 1927. A passenger train wrecks as it nears a mideastern U.S. farm town. Young Dr. Jim Martin, treating the injured, meets Annette, a French girl trained as a midwife, recently orphaned, and sent there to live with her uncle. When the uncle dominates and abuses her, Jim intervenes but is blocked in his efforts. Meanwhile, conflict with the county medical society drives him to practice in isolation, fully a 'country' doctor. Jim's failing but inescapable marriage stands in the way of freeing Annette from bondage. He contrives to send her to nursing school, where her studies are...