Still in the twilight of her beauty, but drained of love for her alcoholic husband, Stella Ryan falls into a trap of deliverance set by a coarse but young and handsome opportunist while her two boys Lou and Joe, missing the father they adore, befriend a combat vet who, secretly tormented by his role in the war against the Japanese in the South Pacific, enters their lives on a mission to protect them from the predator he suspects is out to trade their mother’s life for her money.