Richard "King" Howland, a ruthless and bigoted land monarch on the Hawaiian island of Kauai, is bitterly upset when his younger sister, Sloan, announces that she wants to marry a full-blooded Hawaiian, Paul Kahana, although he himself is having a clandestine affair with the native-born Mei Chen. At the young couple's engagement party, Mei Chen's drunken brother attacks Howland with a knife, and Paul is accidentally stabbed to death when he intercedes. Blaming her brother for Paul's death, Sloan refuses to speak to him and goes to Honolulu. There Paul's brother, Dean, finds her in a drunken stupor and takes her to live at his mother's home. A short time later, Mei Chen dies while giving birth to a son, but Howland refuses to accept the child, and Sloan decides to care for it. Following a fight with Howland, Sloan and Dean take the child and leave, but Howland, forced to accept the fact that he will soon have a halfcaste brother-in-law, finally decides to give his son the family name.