It is 1857 and Tilmon Goodwyn wields absolute power over his island plantation but hardly makes a profit because of his profligate spending and gambling. He secures financial benefits from his wealthy widowed mother, but when she trifles with an opportunistic artist, Tilmon meets head-on with a threat to his inheritance. Tilmon’s wife Georgiana, an orphan raised by an abolitionist, has married well because of her exceptional beauty. To secure her husband’s devotion, she vows to give him many sons, though her babies die.