A family living in the Appalachian Mountains in the 1930s gets books to read during the regular visits of the "Book Woman"--a librarian who rides a pack horse through the mountains, lending books to the isolated residents.

In the wake of a sensationalized 1934 trial involving an Appalachian Virginia teacher's alleged murder of her tyrant father, novice journalist Carl Jennings is denounced by a greedy media determined to portray the defendant as a backwards mountain girl.