One summer during the First World War, New York art student Austin Fraser is taken by his family to vacation at a resort town on Lake Superior, where he meets and falls in love with Sara, a miner`s daughter who becomes his model and lover. Each summer for the next 15 years, he travels west to meet up with her, and afterwards forgets her for the rest of the year. Eventually his obsession with her catches up with him and plunges him into emotional chaos that ends in violence.