Idealist John Wickliff Shawnessy (Montgomery Clift) drifts away from his high school sweetheart Nell Gaither (Eva Marie Saint) and enters into a passionate, but loveless, marriage with Susanna Drake (Elizabeth Taylor) a wealthy New Orleans belle. But John soon learns that Susanna's mother died in a lunatic asylum and it becomes apparent that Susanna has inherited her family's curse for she tricked him into marriage. Frustrated with life, John leaves home by enlisting in the Northern Army and fights in Tennessee and Georgia during the terrible and brutal Civil War where he does some soul searching for himself and explores his path in life to what may lay in store for him should he return home.