Samuel Martin is not afflicted with the wanderlust that teenage boys growing into young men in isolated areas in isolated times so often are. Samuel has no desire to break out of the isolation of the remote rural farm town he was born into and see the world. He wants nothing more than to be the third generation patriarch on the farm of his ancestors, living on the land he loves in company with the family he loves. He is just facing the problem of finding the one girl he wants to share his love and life with. He thinks he has found that girl in the form of the beautiful, enigmatic young prostitute girl who hides her early life and hides herself behind the flowery contrived name of Clarinda. The girl shares her body with him but never shares her real name. Neither does she share the love she is incapable of returning. Samuel loves the girl recklessly and beyond the point of caution. In the process he learns that loving recklessly and beyond caution can invert and disrupt your life the way following any passion recklessly can. He also learns that life is what happens to you when you had other plans.