Helen, a newly hired schoolteacher, arrives at her post in a small Wyoming town. She begins teaching and finds it very difficult at first. She starts going to dances and other recreational events with the young people of the town and eventually falls in love with an introverted man named Dan.
Helen and Dan are married and go on their honeymoon. Helen buys things with which to decorate their house but feels inadequate given the lack of city amenities that she was used to growing up.
Helen throws a dinner party. The visitors are put off because they think she is trying to be pretentious in the way she decorates. Eventually she discovers that she is pregnant; Dan cares for her well and she has the baby.
During a snowstorm while Dan is away working, their young son Danny gets very sick and Helen has to brave the snow to go get help; she decides to take her son to visit her family in California as soon as the weather permits. Dan stays to work the ranch and Helen travels west with her son.
She has a wonderful time visiting her family in California. Wayne, her old high school sweetheart, shows her a new house with modern appliances. She extends her stay in California to help out with a vacant position at the school and to help her sister. Her boyfriend from high school tries to turn her heart away from her husband back in Wyoming. Helen, still in California, decides to stay and teach for the rest of the school year. Her husband Dan responds to her letter with worry that she will never return to him. One day, her son goes missing and she searches for and finds him with the help of her old high school boyfriend.
Helen's sister Nina goes to a late-night jazz club with a man, and Helen and a man named Wendell, who is in love with Nina, follow her there to make sure she is safe. After the man who had brought Nina gets into a fight, Nina flees the club and Helen is able to comfort her. Eventually, Nina marries Wendell, and when Helen hears the words of the marriage vow, she is struck with feeling for her husband.
Helen and her son Danny return home to Dan, and she finds another woman at her home. She is worried at first that Dan had divorced her and remarried during her long absence, but she is reassured when she learns that the woman is her newly married sister-in-law. When Dan comes home, Helen promises to always stay with him.