In the Canadian province of Acadia, young Evangeline is betrothed to Gabriel. But before their wedding can take place, the British imprison the men and send them into exile with their lands forfeit to the Crown Evangeline follows the exiled men in hopes of finding her beloved, but even after he and the other Acadians are released in Louisiana, she cannot find him, always arriving at some locale just after he has departed. But she dedicates her life to searching the continent for the man she loves.

A father reads to his daughter and her fiancé who have been quarreling, Longfellow's poem "Evangeline": In 1775, in the village of Grand-Pre in the valley of Arcadia, a wedding ceremony attended by all the happy villagers, between Evangeline, the daughter of the wealthiest farmer in the region, and Gabriel, the son of a blacksmith, is stopped by British soldiers who exile the French Arcadians. Gabriel and Evangeline are torn apart and put on separate boats heading south. Gabriel's boat takes him to the lowlands of Louisiana where he and his father prosper, but he refuses other women, longing for Evangeline. For years she searches for Gabriel, also refusing others, and once they almost meet. When they are very old, Gabriel, dying of pestilence, comes to the almshouse where Evangeline is a nurse and dies in her arms. The modern-day lovers, moved by the tale, forgive each other.