A young cadre of the state is in the board of a re-education programme for bourgeoisies, but the object of its "rehabilitation" turns out to be her mother-in-law who moved South after 1954.

When her parents pass away during a skirmish, Hiền moves to the countryside and lives with her uncle, supporting his beverage stall by the river day by day. Admired by many for her beauty, she rejects many suitors, until a fateful encounter with a dashing young sublieutenant changes her life upside down.

Orphaned at a young age and later abandoned by her godfather, Vân grows up in the care of kind-hearted nuns at a convent on the outskirts of Saigon. With the help of Mother Superior, the young woman leaves the convent upon adulthood and finds work as a governess for the estate of a wealthy industrialist where she again encounters a series of miseries and torments that have once plagued her childhood.