16-year-old Marianne will be confirmed. She is reluctant to do this, but her mother is more than happy for her to complete the confirmation. Marianne travels to a rectory in the country where she and a group of other girls will live while they read to the priest. On Midsummer's Eve, she meets by chance one of the other confirmands' fiancés and the feeling arises.

Lady Lillian Gardner is unhappily married to rich businessman Richard Gardner. On a banquet she meets Hugo Paton whom she falls in love with.

In 1803 the Swedish inventor John Ericsson is born. After a military career he went to England and became one of the first builders of locomotives. Despite large debts, he invents the propeller. In 1839 he crosses the Atlantic and builds ships for the US Navy. When the US civil war breaks out, the Federation needs a ship to match the Confederate 'Merrimac' and preventing the Confederation from exporting cotton to Europe. Ericsson builds the 'Monitor', a ship the Federation needs to win the war.

Proud Katrina falls in love with Johan, who's a sailor, and follows him home to the island of Åland. She has been promised a paradise with blooming apple trees but are greeted by poverty and hard work.

The poor farmer Jan is getting very old when he becomes father to the girl, Klara Gulla. First, he sees the child as a burden, but when he receives the newborn child in his arms he is overjoyed. He does everything in his power for her during her. But when she as an adult leaves home, Jan can not come over the loss of her.

When his ancestors seem to appear in the clouds during a storm of biblical proportions, young Ingmar decides to give up his career as the village teacher and to reclaim the land and farm of his fathers. The same stormy night, the charismatic preacher Helgum arrives in the village to spread the word about the promises of the Holy Land, which turns parents and children, men and wives, brothers and sisters, against one another. Ingmar is torn between his love for the headmaster’s daughter Gertrud who is under the preacher’s spell, and the prospects of marrying the judge’s daughter Barbro in order to keep the farm.

Widower Robert Rossiter lives in New York with his two teenage children. When he visits a fashion house one day, he falls in love with the store clerk Joyce Roamer.