In which a ragged fourteen-year-old girl tends to her ailing family amid the Ohio wilderness, while a slender and inquisitive boy named Martin Arrowsmith devotes himself to the dusty and disorderly office of the country doctor in the small town of Elk Mills. Amid the cluttered curiosities and earnest exhortations of the old Doc Vickerson, Martin is inspired to seek knowledge and a greater purpose beyond the sleepy confines of his hometown.