Tess Durbeyfield is a luminous beauty who is violated by one man and forsaken by another, but she refuses to remain a victim. Her struggle to endure despite the abandonment of her true love, and despite her desperate attempt to attain happiness, propels Tess toward a tragic end.

A tale of regret and greed in the Gold Rush-era American West. in 1867, Daniel Dillon, the wealthy 49er who runs Kingdom Come, a Sierra Nevada boomtown, is trying to bring the railroad through town when the past comes back to haunt him. Twenty years ago, he sold his wife and daughter to another goldminer for the claim to the gold mine that brought him his fortune.

When low-born, country girl Tess Durbeyfield is driven by family poverty to claim kinship with the wealthy D'Urbervilles, a series of tragedies befalls her as she comes under the influence of the manipulative Alec D'Urberville.