Set in northern Vietnam two hundred years ago.Tuy lies dying. For the first time he tells his 17-year-old foster-son Hien about his mother.

Ly An, a young woman in a pottery village, had fallen pregnant. Unmarried, she refuses to name the father. The village elders order that her head be shaved and her baby set adrift on the river and left to the mercy of the gods.

Just as the baby is about to be sent to its fate, a thunder storm bursts over the river. Many villagers die in the storm. In the confusion, three itinerant carvers - Tuy and his two blood brothers - abscond with the baby in the basket. But Tuy dies before finishing the story.

Hien leaves home to seek out the rest of his mother's story.

From one of Tuy's former companion carvers, he is told that Ly An was put on trial and condemned to drown for sleeping with demons. But Hien refuses to believe his mother died this way.

From the third carver, Hien is told that the villagers decided that the storm was a sign that their god were angered because Ly An had been chosen to serve as his concubine. But Hien refuses to believe this version too.

In the end Hien learns the truth: the three carvers had rescued Ly An from prison and escaped by boat down the river.

Living in the wilderness, Ly An had been the lover to each of the three men in turn. But what they started as a utopian existence outside of conventional society was inevitably riven by jealousies. Ly An takes her child and flees by canoe