The story is about a young woman named Ruth, from Dearborn, Michigan, with a dream to travel the world. The last thing she wants to do is be tied down at home with a family, but she marries the boy she meets in high school, and they have a child. Some years later, he takes a job as a field manager in Fordlandia, a town Henry Ford built on the banks of the Tapajos River in the Amazon rain forest to house laborers hired to work his rubber tree plantation. What will Ruth do there? Will she realize her dream?