Owen Winthrop, the profligate son of a New England business tycoon, has offended the town's morals one last time. His father disowns him and sends him into exile with a sizable amount of money he can waste or use to make a life for himself. He comes to California where he discovers a small fishing village with an abundant harvest of sardines. The fishermen make very little money off the catch, since most of the profits go to the canneries in Monterey. Determined to build a cannery there, Owen goes to Monterey to learn the business. After a year of working in one of the canneries, he returns and builds his own cannery which brings him enormous wealth. Ruthlessly, he forces all the town's businesses to share their profits with him. In complete control of the town, he builds other businesses, including a notorious brothel. Convinced he needs a wife to be accepted socially, Owen marries a girl he met in Monterey. It is a loveless marriage, but when a daughter, Hattie, is born, he learns he is capable of love and becomes devoted to the child. She grows into a beautiful and confident young woman with a thirst for life outside of the confines of her home. Fascination with a Portuguese fisherman results in a torrid love affair that results in a grisly murder. To punish her, Owen confines her to their home, where she lives in isolation for twenty years until his death. Made heiress by to a great fortune by her father as both a joke and revenge on a town that reviled him, she emerges from isolation determined to atone for the sins she discovered her father has committed. Her crusade takes her from pariah to sainthood as she molds the town in her own image. Her deeds and gifts to the town makes her everyone's Aunt Hattie in this family saga that spans the Twentieth Century.