The story is about a Norwegian immigrant farmer in Wisconsin, Martinius Jacobson (Edward G. Robinson), his wife Bruna (Agnes Moorehead) and their seven-year-old daughter Selma (Margaret O'Brien), who is often bedeviled by her playmate and five-year-old cousin Arnold (Jackie 'Butch' Jenkins). Martinius simply wants to work his land and be a loving husband and father to his family. The one great ambition in the life of Martinius is to build a new barn, but tragedy strikes. How the family copes with that is the core and the charm of the film.