Nineteen-year-old Christy Huddleston arrives from Asheville to teach in the poverty-stricken community of Cutter Gap, where she must learn to live on her own and fit it with the locals. Christy makes friends with Miss Alice at the Mission, the local doctor and the Reverend. Meanwhile, Christy and Dr. MacNeill spend some "quality" time together and the discovery of a secret stash of moonshine beneath the school causes problems for David and Christy.

Rob Allen enters a writing contest and Little Burl is injured when he falls through a crevice in the rocks.

Christy finds an abandoned baby in the woods and reconsiders David's marriage proposal in order to adopt it.

A visiting benefactor for the mission seeks to acquire land for his lumber business, but it may not be what it seems.