Kari Baxter Jacobs, having learned of her husband's infidelity and that he wants a divorce, decides she is going to stay in her marriage and try to make things work, but the arrival of an old flame confuses matters.

Two cousins are driven to extremes by the power of love, as one helps his terminally ill wife commit suicide and the other becomes involved in a passionate affair with his wife's new assistant.

Hester Prynne, a young woman in seventeenth century Massachusetts, is condemned by Puritan law to wear a scarlet "A" as the symbol of the sin she committed.