Sam Logan, a twice divorced man becomes
involved with
Margaret Cutter, a young woman on a neighboring farm in late nineteenth
century
northern Michigan. She carries the guilt
of being blamed by her mother for her baby brother’s drowning. He
is burdened by his previous marital
failures and his inability to live up to his wealthy father’s
expectations. Sam’s son Isaiah, from
his first marriage, is desperately in love with Margaret, but she sees
him only
as a boy.
She
becomes pregnant with Sam’s child and dreams of a
life together. Her baby will, in her
mind, compensate for the loss of her brother.
But Sam’s father will disinherit him if he marries her, and threatens
to
leave his considerable holdings to Isaiah.
She leaves a note for him
with Isaiah, setting up a last
meeting to try to work out their dilemma.
Isaiah delivers the message, but keeps the note. She is
distraught and suicidal. She has with
her a bottle of laudanum, given to her by a traveling salesman.
He is desperate. They quarrel.
She drinks some of the laudanum.
He finishes the bottle. While
they are both under the influence of the drug, she dies
He had told Isaiah
that he would be clearing brush for a new road that day. This will become his alibi.
After the murder, Sam returns to clearing
brush, and Isaiah joins him, and sees
that not much work has been accomplished since last they worked
together on the
road.
When Margaret does not return from what her parents had
thought was a flower gathering expedition, a search party, joined by
Sam and
Isaiah, sets out to look for her. Her
body is found, and suspicion begins to fall on Sam, whose relationship
with her
was well known.
He is arrested and tried.
The tension builds. What will
Isaiah do? He can provide his father
with a solid alibi. All he has to do is
stretch the truth a little. He does not
want to lie, nor does he desire to see his father convicted. The townspeople are solidly against Sam
because of his previous marital failures.
Isaiah testifies that his father worked on the road that day,
but he
does so in such a way as not to firmly establish the alibi. Sam is convicted and Isaiah leaves the area
to become a sailor on the Great Lakes.
The novel closes with Sam and Isaiah living uncomfortably
together,
years later in a house Isaiah inherits from his mother.
The supporting cast of characters include a hired hand on
the Cutter farm who tries to sell his testimony to the highest bidder
so he can
leave for California, a young, tubercular reporter who encounters the
distraught Margaret the day before she died and later befriends Isaiah,
the
salesman who gave Margaret the laudanum, and of course the ambitious
prosecutor
and high priced defense attorney, paid for by Sam’s father in an effort
not so
much to save his son as to protect the family name.