Mara, a hard-working widow, brings up her two children in a developing industrial Transylvanian town.

Lișcă is a woman who awaits the return of her husband from war, only he is long overdue. Many callers come, yet she holds on to the hope her husband will return.

A construction site is set up next to a colony of forest workers. Murgu, a worker on the construction site, and Maria, a girl raised by foresters who took care of the colony's household affairs, fall in love with each other.