Rachel, her father David, and adopted brother Isaac flee an attack on their home that leaves David disabled, and everyone traumatised. When they arrive at Janice’s farm, they are welcomed in and given asylum. While David convalesces, Janice asks Rachel to marry her youngest son, Caleb. With the offer of marriage looming over her, she learns of hidden tensions within the family, slowly illuminating cracks in the happy facade Janice seems intent on living. Rachel is determined to go North, where rumours tell of a landless blighted than the one they live in.
In a future where water is scarce, a farmer defends his land and hopes to rejuvenate his parched soil. However, his daughter's boyfriend schemes to steal the land for himself.
Saul Barnard grew up in a family of woodcutters. The woodcutters are scared of the elephants in the forest, but there's one elephant that never seems to threaten Saul. Tired of being exploited by wood buyers, Saul takes a stand and his father chases him away. He goes to work on the wood buyer MacDonald's wood yard, where he gets to know MacDonald's daughter, Kate, and falls in love with her. After a few years he leaves MacDonald and joins the first prospectors in the forest, searching for gold. Millwood becomes a small town with hotels and bars and houses. Kate appears again.