Claire Richardson travels to Spain in search of her mother who had abandoned her in babyhood for Manuel Manzales. First she meets Ricardo, Manuel's handsome, enigmatic brother to whom she is instantly attracted but who is shackled by the feuds and passions of past generations. Resentful of the rigid Spanish code and suffocated by the constricting influence of a family to which she feels she owes no allegiance, Claire finds herself, by an ugly twist of fate, being asked to surrender her future for a mother who has already impoverished her past.