George Roy Hill

A couple swap city life for the country, but their picturesque new hometown turns out to be just a little bit different to what they were expecting. When Andy and Elizabeth buy a farm in Vermont, they can't imagine the trouble that awaits them. Andy has quit his job as a sports journalist and is planning to use the peace and quiet of the country to write the Great American Novel. From the moment the movers' truck gets lost with their furniture, though, there's little peace and less quiet. From a manical mailman to a dead body buried in the garden, Andy is distracted by the town and its wacky inhabitants. His effort at a novel is mediocre, at best, and he's threatened by Elizabeth's foray into writing when she attempts a children's book. Can the Farmers survive the townsfolk and each other? —Rick Munoz <rick.munoz@his.com> Andy and Elizabeth are sick of life in the city, and decide to move to the country. Buying a home near a picturesque town, then soon discover (to their horror) that things are done differently in the country. They must deal with all of the local characters, the local animals, as well as any skeletons in the closet. —Murray Chapman <muzzle@cs.uq.oz.au>

The Charlestown Chiefs, a minor league hockey team, need to drum up attendance for their upcoming game with a team from Hyannisport. Television host Jim Carr (Andrew Duncan) interviews Denis Lemieux (Yvon Barrette) on his show "Sports Talk" about the "finer points of hockey." English is the French Canadian player's second (and not best) language, but Denis gamely describes penalty moves like hooking and slashing, using his stick on Jim to demonstrate. Reggie "Reg" Dunlop (Paul Newman) is the team's aging player/coach, and the team is dead last in the second-rate Federal League. He meets opposing player Nick Brophy (Jon Gofton) at center ice to start the Hyannisport game, and Nick reveals he is drunk and resents that his coach put him in the game. In the broadcast booth, Chiefs player Dave Carlson (Jerry Houser), who supposedly was injured in a previous game, reveals that he isn't playing because he actually has a cold. The lone quality player for the Chiefs is Ned Braden (Michael Ontkean), who is not only the highest-scorer in the Federal League (he makes his record shot during the Hyannisport game), but he is also a Princeton grad who plays for the love of the game. Joe McGrath (Strother Martin), the team's manager, seems to be receiving encouragement by the mysterious team owner to come up with publicity stunts for the players. Some of the men are put into a fashion show, and Johnny Upton (Allan Nicholls) has had it: he warns McGrath that he plans to flash the audience so they won't have to do such degrading things again. Joe blows him off to make a phone call to locate Reg and Ned, who should be at the show as well, but has to stop the call short when cries of shock and disgust greet Johnny when he makes good on his threat and flashes the audience as he takes the runway. Ned and Reg pass the mill, which Ned tells him is going to close and lay off 10,000 workers. The Chiefs will have difficulty filling the stadiums with most of the town's residents suddenly out of work. Ned's wife Lily (Lindsay Crouse) drives them home from the local bar, uptight about being a hockey wife with a troubled marriage in a town she can't stand. Ned gives his attention to their St. Bernard dog Ruby and doesn't seem interested in his wife's attitude. Joe is training Reg for a future in an office job and tells him to pick up the three new players he obtained from the Iron League -- the Hanson Brothers (Jeff & Steve Carlson, David Hanson). He finds them at the bus station by the noise of one of the boys trying to force a lost quarter out of the vending machine by shaking it down. He takes them to their hotel where the team will pick up their expenses for a week and, as they go down the hall for sodas, he notices toy cars and tracks in their suitcase. Reg is less than impressed with the new acquisitions, and rails at Joe for picking up any discarded players he can find at rock bottom prices; his plan is to refuse to play them. At the bar Reg meets his (eventually) ex-wife Francine (Jennifer Warren), with whom he still has a good friendship. Before the bus leaves for an away game, Lily offers Ned a book with all the sex scenes highlighted, but he refuses to take it, though Reg is impressed. On the bus, Ned runs a betting pool and says that he will earn enough money to buy the team so he can run it his way. The team worries about a crazy player named Oggie Oglethorpe (Ned Dowd), but learn he was suspended and won't play. As Reg leaves the hotel for the game, he spots the Hansons playing with their racing cars. In the locker room, he sees them wrapping their knuckles with aluminum foil and tape prior to the game. Reg has a roll in the hay with Suzanne Hanrahan (Melinda Dillon), who reveals that she discovered she is a lesbian after a night of drinking and exploratory sex with another player's wife. On the ice, Reg decides to sneak a goal and approaches Tommy Hanrahan (Christopher Murney) in the goalie cage, skating by and egging him on about his wife being a dyke; Hanrahan chases Reg and leaves the cage open for a Chiefs goal. Ned is disgusted and calls the team's win "garbage." Reg, however, wants the team to be fired up and have hope for the future, so he works with reporter Dickie Dunn (M. Emmet Walsh) to suggest that a Florida retirement community may buy the team. The next day Reg sees Lily in the town square and talks with her; she is in a bad mood and even cusses over a statue of a dog in the square, supposedly a canine hero credited with saving the town during a 1938 flood. Reg tries to bolster the team's morale one player at a time, and talks with Dave Carlson about aging and suggests it may be time to quit hockey. Dave idolizes Reg, and when Barclay Donaldson (Ross Smith) from the Broom County team suggests that Reg shouldn't be in the league, Dave goes after him, and the fight puts him out of the game. Finally, desperate to win, Reg releases the Hansons on the rival team. The Hansons immediately assault and brutalize the opposition, much to the delight of Charlestown's working-class fans, who create a booster club and begin following the team on their own bus to attend away games. At a game against Peterboro, the teams begin fighting before the game begins and with no officials on the ice to stop the ruckus. The boys are mutilated as they finally stand at attention for the National Anthem. An official breaks ranks to yell at the Hansons, but one of them points out that they are at attention because the song hasn't finished, and the official cools off. By the time the team goes to an away game against Hyannisport they are winning, but their reputation has preceded them, and mobs of people boo them at their arrival. They stop jeering when the bus drives by with all the Chiefs and boosters mooning them out every bus window as they pass. The other Chiefs players soon take their cue from the popularity of the Hansons and become "goons," fighting as much as (if not more than) actually playing hockey. At Peterboro a fan throws something and hits a Hanson in the face, and all three brothers take to the stands to find and pummel him. After the game the police arrest the Hansons. Peterboro still loses the game. When the bus arrives back in Charlestown and Ned is not on it for Lily to pick up (he gets off and walks the last few miles), Lily is upset and tears out of the lot in her van, but not before Reg climbs aboard and starts talking to her about getting her head straight. She drops him at his place and drives off in tears. Francine tells Reg she has a job offering in Long Island and will be moving away. Reg goes on Jim Carr's radio show to announce that he wants to put a $100 bounty on the head of Syracuse player Tim McCracken (Paul D'Amato). Dave (who has taken the name "Killer") Carlson calls Reg, anxious to claim the money, which Reg says will have to be earned. Reg tries to get some sleep before the game, but Joe calls to read him off for putting a bounty on a player's head, and suddenly Lily has arrived with the dog (who takes over Reg's bed) and her belongings, anxious to straighten herself out. Reg passes out in the remaining bed space left by the St. Bernard. Before the game, Reg yells at the organist for playing "Lady of Spain" and rips up the sheet music. The game is going well, with plenty of beatings between goals, but Ned refuses to play dirty, so Reg benches him (first in his career) and Ned goes to the broadcast booth to gripe to Jim Carr, going into an uncharacteristic tirade and discovering that Jim wears a toupee (and announcing it on the air). Finally, Reg finds out that the team is owned by somebody named McCambridge, so he goes to the owner's home to talk with him. It turns out he is a she: widow Anita McCambridge (Kathryn Walker) tells Reg that she abhors violence and won't let her kids watch hockey. She plans to fold the team to take a tax write-off as her accountants have recommended. She realizes the Chiefs can be sold, but chooses not to. Disgusted, Reg insults her and leaves, then drives to Ned's house to find he is out in the woods trying to avoid talking to him; he yells to Ned that he can play however he wants and, since the team is folding, he wants to go out in style. Reg takes Lily to Francine's beauty shop for a makeover at his expense. She says Lily is pretty and could look like Cher with the right hair and makeup. At the championship game, Reg tells the guys that he wants to play "old time hockey" and not be a goon for what might be his last game. The Hansons are all for it, so they take the ice and wait for the Syracuse team to come out, but the ice remains empty. Then the announcer receives the roster for the opposition: they have brought out the top goons to play against the Chiefs, including McCracken and the dreaded Oglethorpe. The moment the puck drops, the Syracuse men launch upon the Chiefs in a massive fight. Ned doesn't get involved, and Joe sits in amazement in the stands as his boys don't fight back. At the half-time break, Joe hollers at the mangled Chiefs that he has gathered every major NHL talent scout to the game to watch them and offer contracts. Back on the ice, "old time hockey" is gone, replaced by the Chiefs' old ways. While Ned sits on the bench, he suddenly spots Francine escorting the new, improved Lily to the stands; he is overcome with the sight of her, and suddenly he skates out to center ice and begins removing parts of his uniform. Jim Carr is stunned and disgusted, but the band launches into "The Stripper" as Ned continues his striptease and the other players slowly cease their fighting to watch. McCracken yells at an official to stop Ned, but he finds nothing wrong and won't interfere. McCracken then strikes the official, who declares the Syracuse team has forfeited the game and takes the winner's cup to Reg, who passes it to Ned as they skate off the ice (Ned stripped down to his skates and jockstrap) to thunderous applause. The Chiefs win the Federal League and receive a heroes' welcome back in Charlestown Reg is pleased that the NHL's Minnesota Nighthawks want to hire him as their coach, and that several key Chief's players will be part of the bargain. Reg and Ned sit atop a convertible in the victory parade, and Lily is by Ned's side. Reg says farewell to Francine, who interrupts the victory parade in town as he lets her drive through with her things in a trailer, and he tells her to stay in touch through his new team.

After WW1, an ex-pilot takes up barn-storming and chance-meets a former German ace fighter pilot with whom he co-stars in Hollywood war movies depicting aerial dog-fights. A biplane pilot who had missed flying in WWI takes up barnstorming and later a movie career in his quest for the glory he had missed, eventually getting a chance to prove himself in a film depicting the dogfights in the Great War. —Keith Loh <loh@sfu.ca> Waldo Pepper was a World War I flight trainer. Waldo believes the honor of the best WWI fighter pilot goes to German Ernst Kessler, although Waldo's flight commander Newt believes that if Waldo had entered the war earlier and had got the flight time, he would have proved himself to be the best. In the post-war era, Waldo, self-coined as the "Great Waldo Pepper", has like many war pilots resorted to barnstorming to make a living. Instead of the penny-ante flights he provides to adoring fans, Waldo wants to join Dillhoefer's flying circus. Dillhoefer will only let him join if he can prove he can perform a death defying feat that his audiences crave to see. He decides to join forces with sometimes rival pilot, Axel Olsson, to come up with such a stunt. Another possibility, with the help of plane designer Ezra Stiles, his girlfriend Maude's brother, is to complete the first ever outside loop. But when the defying part of death defying comes close to not happening, Waldo's livelihood is jeopardized. He may have to reinvent himself if that livelihood is no longer a possibility. An unexpected source may allow Waldo to show if he really was and is the greatest. —Huggo 1926. Aircraft, in the form of joyrides for cash, air shows, stunt flying and movies on the air battles of WW1, have taken off as a form of entertainment. One pilot cashing in on the trend is Waldo Pepper, a WW1 fighter pilot who now travels around, taking up people for short flights for cash. He regards himself as the second greatest pilot alive. The best? German WW1 ace Ernst Kessler. Pepper and Kessler's paths will cross in the death-defying, high-risk hurly burly that is flying in the 1920s. —grantss

It is about March of 1968. A young lady in her early twenties and her husband pull up in their 1969 Ford Country Squire Station wagon to a lavish upstate New York home on a lake, near the town of Ilium, believed to be the fictional title for the actual city of Schenectady. She frantically knocks on the front door calling for her father and no response. She peers through all the windows of the lavish home and sees nothing. Then she lets herself in the back of the home in the utility room desperately searching for her father. In the basement of his home, Billy Pilgrim, a balding, bespectacled, mild-mannered, and passive man of 45 years of age is typing a letter to his local daily newspaper of his time travels and how he is uncontrollably traveling from one point of his life to the other, being "unstuck in time". While he is typing his letter, he finds himself at the Battle of the Bulge in Belgium in January 1945, at the age of 22 alone and running through the snow. He is not dressed as a soldier at all, no weapon, and wearing a stocking cap, overcoat, sweater, and pants that are nothing suggesting Army attire. He is kidnapped by two brash, uncouth, mean, and very stupid men of his age, fellow soldiers named Paul Lazzaro and Roland Weary. They immediately think he's a German, but he denies it and they soon forget about it, since there's an attack going on. The men's Corporal abandons them and Lazzaro swears revenge. Briefly, Billy finds himself back on planet Tralfamadore in the geodesic dome with beautiful, 20-something porn star queen, Montana Wildhack and she suspects he's time traveling again and wants to give him a kiss to help forget about it. Simultaneously, Billy is back at the Battle of the Bulge and Paul Lazzaro hears him say "a little kiss" and Lazzaro is outraged beyond rationalization and accuses Billy of being homosexual, violently attacking him. Shortly after, two German guards take them at gunpoint tell them to get up and for Weary to give up his boots It is the summer of 1946, at Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Billy and his annoying and overweight new bride, Valencia Merble Pilgrim, are on their honeymoon. She thinks he had girlfriends during the war, but was glad they waited to have sex and that he married her. Billy seems bored by her doting and chit-chatting . Back to January 1945, Billy, Weary, and Lazzaro are marching with many other soldiers throughout war-torn remains of an unidentified town in Belgium, France, or Germany. Billy is flirted with by two young prostitutes while marching and bumps into Weary, stepping on his gangrene-riddled feet from wearing no combat boots. Lazzaro is furious and beats up Billy for it. Two German officers spot Billy for his clumsiness and bring him over to pose for a photo. Simultaneously, the portrait flashes forward to 1955-1958 with Billy and his family dedicating a new Ilium Optometry Center. Afterwards, an ill, senile, and shell-shocked Colonel named Wild Bob is escorting the men onto the train bound for a POW camp and fails to realize his men are not there. Billy enters the boxcar and goes to sleep. After pulling the covers on his head, it is the Spring of 1946 and he is in a veterans hospital being treated, allegedly for shell-shock or a nervous breakdown. His southern-accented and sweet-natured mother is talking to fellow patient, Elliot Rosewater of Billy's experiences. Soon afterwards, Billy is back in the boxcar with fellow soldier Weary blaming him for his death from gangrene. Paul Lazzaro cradles him in his arms and he dies. Billy finds himself back in the veterans hospital being given shock treatment. The steam locomotive train pulls up to a POW camp somewhere in Germany. Billy is given a blue, fur-collared overcoat way too small for him by German soldiers as a joke. The men are processed by a German officer and led into a shower room to be deloused. Afterwards, Billy finds himself as a little boy of about 6 or 7 in the shower at the YMCA and his father takes him out of the shower and throws him into the pool to "sink or swim". Billy and other soldiers are being marched to the mess hall and given a jovial welcome by English officers singing "The Yanks are Here". They are led into a dining room decorated with candles and with a potluck of potato soup, hot bread, pies, and marmalade. The English officer escorting Billy tells him the coat was a joke and to wear it with pride and how to hold his head high, despite the deplorable circumstances. Billy passes out at the suggestion. With the tune of the Andrews Sisters singing Johnny Fedora, Billy is at his new home in Ilium in spring and summer of 1947 playing with his new puppy, Spot, with his wife calling him for dinner twice. There is a party going on at his house a later night celebrating his new baby daughter, Barbara. He's obviously feeling out of place at the party with disinterested attendees and his wife chewing him out for the dog peeing on her leg. He takes the dog outside, sits at the lake, and sees a strange occurrence in the night sky, a beam of light coming to him, then leaving. It's back to the POW camp. Paul Lazzaro threatens Billy for Weary's death, but fellow soldier Edgar Derby intervenes. Derby is a middle-aged man of 44 years of age that gave up his job as a trade school teacher in Boston to fight in the war. He is a father figure to Billy and the two immediately form a close bond and friendship. Derby goes through Billy's coat and finds a partial denture and diamond of at least 2 carats. It is Billy and Valencia's anniversary at their home in the summer of 1964. He gives his wife a ring made by the diamond found in his coat. Billy is bored by the crowd and retreats inside his home. He catches his son in the bathroom looking at a porn magazine and scolds him for it. But afterwards, Billy looks at the magazine himself, smiling with delighted interest at the centerfold of Montana Wildhack and goes to the bedroom with it. Billy finds himself back at the POW camp in the briefing room with the rest of the soldiers to be told about the men's new assignment in Dresden and how lucky they are. Edgar Derby is nominated as their leader. Simultaneously, when Derby gives an acceptance speech, Billy is at a Lions Club meeting at his hometown in 1957 giving an acceptance speech. It's about 1964 or 1965 and Billy and his family are watching a soft-core porn flick with Montana Wildhack in it. Billy's son enjoys it and his wife is outraged at the filth. Billy pays no attention to her and is engrossed in it. Billy and fellow soldiers are in a boxcar on their way to Dresden and Derby is going over with him a letter he wrote to his wife about his service and about his pride in his son also serving in the South Pacific. About 1965 or 1966, Billy and his wife pull up to a cemetery with a police officer that caught his now-delinquent son and others vandalizing the tombstones and offers to pay off the officers for the damages. The soldiers pull up to the train station at Dresden, being led by an elderly German officer and several teenage proteges under his wing. They are marched to their new quarters through the beautiful city. A group of kids surround Billy while they are marching and an outraged elderly German civilian slaps him in the face, believing he is insulting his people with the coat he is wearing. It is February of 1968. Billy and fellow optometrists, to include his father in law, are about to take a chartered flight to Montreal for a convention. Billy sees visions of skiers in the crowd when waving goodbye and tells the pilots they need to stop the plane, because it will crash. They refuse to acknowledge, but the plane does crash Back to Dresden, the elderly German officer tells them of their quarters, Slaughterhouse Five, where they will be staying and what to shout in German in case of emergency. Billy is buried in the snow in the Green Mountains and a group of skiers find him bloodied and buried in the rubble. Billy's wife frantically pulls her 1967 Cadillac out of the driveway after hearing the news and comes to his rescue. She is so distressed that she misses her turn, backs into a Mercedes, drives the wrong side of the road, and causes numerous damage in vehicle accidents. She escapes the police, gets on the right side of the road, and goes forward, despite the fact the exhaust is ruined and spewing carbon monoxide. There is a brief flashback of Billy giving his wife the car for her birthday maybe a year or two earlier. Then the car pulls up to a hospital in Vermont and she crashes it into the garage, passed out from the carbon monoxide. Two nurses rescue her and bring her inside, with the gurney she's on passing the one Billy is on. Billy is being operated on and simultaneously, he and the fellow soldiers are in their slaughterhouse quarters being briefed about their working assignments by the German officer and daily routine of work. After the operation is over, the doctor that operated on Billy greets his daughter Barbara that everything will be okay. Barbara's husband Stanley comes over to her to give her the news that her mother died from carbon monoxide poisoning earlier. Billy is in his room recovering with an arrogant professor and historian for a roommate named B.C. Rumfoord telling his much-younger wife about being stuck in a room with such a weak and worthless man. He's writing a story on the bombing of Dresden and Billy says in a daze he was there, but Rumfoord couldn't care less. Simultaneously, Billy is blathering in German that he's an American Prisoner of War and Slaughterhouse Five. Rumfoord loses his temper and tells Billy the bombing was justified, while simultaneously, Billy as a young soldier is walking amidst a crowd of cheerful kids just hours before the bombing. The night of the bombing at dinner, an American dressed up in a Nazi uniform with American flag decor named Howard Campbell, is summoned to recruit the men for the Free American Corps, which is an allied unit with the Germans and that the Communists and Jews are their enemy. Derby calls him out on it for what a filthy traitor he really is, but before he can say anything more, an alarm goes off for the city and the men are ordered to evacuate to an underground cellar for shelter. Dresden gets bombed. In March 1968, Billy is taken home by his daughter Barbara and she pleads with him to stay with she and her husband, but he refuses. He is senile, listless, and apathetic at this point. He takes his elderly dog Spot and shuts the door in her face. The bombing is over and the soldiers go up the stairs to inspect the damage. Simultaneously, Billy is walking upstairs in his posh estate to his bedroom with his dog in his arms. The men walk outside. A teenage German soldier guarding their group denounces the bombers as filthy pigs in German and runs to rescue his family, who were already killed and he burns to death searching for them. Billy is laying in bed at his home with Spot and his son Robert has come to visit him. The former delinquent is now a sharp Green Beret in the Army fighting in Vietnam home on emergency leave. Robert is caring of him and trying to have a conversation, but Billy is preoccupied with himself, looking out the window at the night sky, and uninterested at his visiting, but assures him he's proud of him. Right after Robert leaves, the beam of light he saw in the sky while at the lake at his house in 1947 reappears and takes him away. He and his dog Spot are whisked away to a geodesic dome on the planet Tralfamadore. He's confounded as to his appearance there. The Tralfamadorian elder tells him he can't see them because they live in the Fourth Dimension and that he can't leave the dome. No reason why he is there, he just is. Billy and the American soldiers are ordered by the elderly German officer to process the corpses from the rubble of the bombed Dresden city and to collect their personal remains. They are given a direct order that any looting or stealing will result in firing squad. While Billy and the soldiers are collecting the bodies, he's on Tralfamadore telling the elder about the bombing and how it affected him, but he's comforted and assured that everything that happens always has and always will happen and that the past, present, and future are always happening at the same time in their world, which also gets destroyed and destroys the entire universe because of a mishap with one of their test pilots. Porn actress Montana Wildhack has now been added to the exhibit with Billy in the dome and she's scared to death at first not knowing what's happening. The Tralfamadorian elder insists that they mate, but Billy insists on being a Gentleman with her and does not follow the order. But she lets him go to bed with her and they make love. Some days later after the bombing, Derby finds an undamaged figurine in the rubble that is an exact replica of one his son broke before. He's caught by German officers and shot to death by firing squad. Billy tries to stop it to no avail. Billy is back on Tralfamadore with Montana in her new wardrobe. He tells her of his wife, that the thing he liked best about her was her pancakes. They want to have a baby together. It is back to March 1968 when Billy's daughter was frantically searching for him in his house. He, his daughter, and son in law are at the dining room table and she really thinks he's lost his mind about Tralfamadore and his son in law suggests seeing a psychiatrist. He assures them that the Tralfamadorians do not see past, present, and future the way Earthlings do. And also reveals to them the disappeared porn star Montana Wildhack is the love interest there and that he's seen his death. It is an unspecified time, perhaps the early 2000's. An elderly Billy Pilgrim in his 80's addresses a crowd at a high rise in Philadelphia about Tralfamadore and their lack of concept about time. And that a fellow soldier from World War 2 is about to kill him. Paul Lazzaro is now also a very elderly man that lives in the area shooting him sniper-style and instantly killing him. Billy wakes up to find himself amongst the remains to Dresden in April 1945 with Lazzaro and fellow soldiers attempting to steal a grandfather clock. He's assured all the Germans have left, but when in the process of stealing, Lazzaro and the others leave, with the clock toppling on Billy. It turns out the German side of the war is over and Russian soldiers give Billy a drink to celebrate, which he gags Billy and Montana have a baby on Tralfamadore, with the entire planet celebrating with an array of fireworks

In the early 1800s, Prince Keoki Kanakoa of the Hawaiian island of Maui scolds the Yale Divinity School that they have not sent missionaries to his home but others in New England have come to take their land and bring their diseases. A new minister. Reverend Abner Hale, volunteers, along with others. But school leader Dr. Reverend Thorn informs him they will not send him until he is married, knowing the temptations of being around the native women would be too much. Dr. Thorn instructs Hale to come to his sister's house in Walpole, New Hampshire. He has persuaded Abigail and her husband Charles that their daughter, Jerusha, would do better to marry Hale than pine endlessly over her sailor that is the object of her affection, Captain Rafer Hoxworth. Captain Hoxworth is a whaler who returned to the see but seems to have abandoned her. Abner and Jerusha marry and, along with the other volunteers and Prince Keoki, sail for Lahaina, Maui. Abner and Keoki travel well but the rest are endlessly plagued with seasickness. Once in Lahaina, the native women wear no covering above the waist and swim out to greet the ship. The sailors on the ship are quite open of their sexual contact with the native women. This scandalizes the missionaries only to be topped when they learn that incest is practiced by the natives, including the queen. Keoki's father, Kelolo, is both the husband and biological brother of Keoki's mother Malama Kanakoa, the Ali'i Nui or the ruler whom the people consider god-like. Incest is believed to maintain a pure royal bloodline, and Keoki is expected to marry his sister, Noelani, who will one day become the Ali'i Nui. But, Keoki wants to be ordained as a Christian minister and learns from Abner Hale he must refuse it. Hale is infuriated at the altar to Hawaiian idols and has to be physically restrained from destroying them. The Hales labor to construct a church while residing in a grass hut. After saving a baby with a facial birthmark, Jerusha aids the locals and works to put an end to the custom of drowning babies who are malformed or unsightly. Micah, a son, is Jerusha's first child, born after a challenging labor. A little Hawaiian girl named Iliki, who was assigned to the Hales as a servant, is baptized by Abner as his first conversion. Malama consents to study Christianity, but she doesn't want to become a Christian as it would mean having to send Kelolo away. Malama sets a curfew for sailors and prohibits them from mingling with island girls at the Hales' request. Leading the protesting seamen is Captain Hoxworth, who has paused his whaling expedition. When Hoxworth learns that Jerusha is living in Lahaina and is wed to Reverend Hale, whom he hates for motivating Malama to enforce the restrictions, he is devastated. After helping to save the church from partial fire set by the sailors, the Hawaiians drive the sailors back to their ships. Hoxworth seduces Iliki to leave the island with him in retribution for Abner's marriage to Jerusha. When Abner reaches for her, he tosses him overboard. A shark attacks, leaving him walking with a limp. On her deathbed, Malama makes the decision to give up Kelolo as her spouse and undergo Christian baptism. The church is destroyed by a powerful gale that sweeps in after an Ali'i Nui dies, just as the islanders predicted. When Abner tells Keoki that he will never be ordained because he is not white, Keoki rejects Christianity and turns back to his original faith. Noelani takes up the role of Ali'i Nui. Abner learns that Keoki and Noelani are now married and that Malama converted to Christianity solely for the benefit of her people. The infant of Noelani and Keoki is terribly malformed upon birth. Jerusha begs Abner to save the baby, but he refuses, thinking it is God's retribution. Hale learns the child was drowned by Keoki. Jerusha died young because she was weak after years of overworking and having children. Abner grows closer to and more protective of the Hawaiian people after losing Jerusha. In an effort to stop plantation owners and white settlers from annexing additional land, he joins them. Abner votes against the other ministers' desire to acquire and profit from the land, and as a result, he is given to pastor a Connecticut parish. His three children are sent to the Bromley family in New England since he will not leave Hawaii. When Abner gets back to his hut, a young native man awaits him and tells him he wants to aid in Hale's missionary work. When he realizes that the young man was the disfigured baby Jerusha saved from drowning years ago, he is delighted.