Karoliena Kapp is a child of the forest, born into a community of woodcutters. She is given the advantage of a good education, but it serves only to heighten her growing realisation that, because of the harsh injustices of poverty, there is little hope for the woodcutters.The day after her marriage to Johannes, himself of woodcutter stock, she realises that she has made the wrong choice. She may have escaped from the poverty of the forest, but she has exchanged her freedom for a cage. Alone and afraid, she leaves her husband and takes the road back to the forest.