Lem goes to Chicago to sell the wheat his family has grown on their farm in Minnesota. There he meets the waitress Kate. They fall in love and get married before going back to the farm. Kate is accepted by Lem's mother and kid sister but is rejected by his father, who believes she married for the money. (And the fact that Lem didn't get a fair price for the wheat is her fault too). The reapers arrive and quickly they make things even more complicated by making their move on Kate. Lem misunderstands the situation and believes Kate is actually interested. In despair Kate leaves the farm and Lem goes looking for her.

Lem Tustine is the son of a Minnesota wheat farmer off for Chicago to sell his father's annual crop, and though caught in a falling market, he meets Kate, who is a waitress in the Windy City, and brings her home as his bride. His father, whose primary ties are to the land which he loves above all else, takes her for a fortune hunter and strongly resents her marriage to his son and belittles her character. Her repeated efforts to win his approval are unsuccessful. A hailstorm necessitates emergency night-harvesting of the crop, and in the confusion the foreman, Lem's brother, hurts his hand in a threshing machine. Coming to have his hand bandaged, he tries to force his attentions on Kate; and though she repulses him, the elder Tustine witnesses the struggle and informs Lem. The foreman threatens to pull out the workers unless Kate will leave with him; she agrees, thinking her marriage is a failure. Lem bests the foreman in a fight and is barely missed by his father's gunfire at the deserting workers. Realizing he has almost killed his son, Tustine relents, and Lem brings back his wife to a humbled and more tolerant father.