Barbara Loden
Wanda, after a string of abusive relationships, abandons her family and seeks solace in the company of a petty criminal.
A young field administrator for the TVA comes to rural Tennessee to oversee the building of a dam on the Tennessee River. He encounters opposition from the local people, in particular a farmer who objects to his employment (with pay) of local black laborers. Much of the plot revolves around the eviction of an elderly woman from her home on an island in the River, and the young man’s love affair with that woman’s widowed granddaughter.
A fragile Kansas girl’s unrequited and forbidden love for a handsome young man from the town’s most powerful family drives her to heartbreak and madness.