When a family adopts Esther, a nine-year-old Russian orphan with a tragic background, mysterious and disturbing events start occurring around the family and Esther's new classmates in school.

After a blissful summer of closeness with his mother in the safe confines of their home, Norman returns to school and is flooded with fears about what really happened with Blaire Watson. Norma is forced to face the truth about Norman for the first time and turns for support to the other man in her life, Norman's half-brother Dylan. This relationship triggers Norman's jealousy and a new kind of love triangle erupts between Norma and her two sons.

A pharmacist's daughter seduced by her father's assistant has a child and is banished to a repressive reform school. Escaping, she makes her way penniless to a brothel where she lives for the moment.