The film begins with headlines stating that 15-year-old Danielle Miller has murdered a man, Rick Lazich, who was the latest lover of her mother Valerie Hayden. Dani's father, Luke Miller describes the events that led to the tragedy. Near the end of World War II, Army Air Forces hero Miller is in San Francisco for a parade in his honor, and meets Valerie Hayden at an art show where one of her works is being exhibited. He is invited to dinner by Valerie's mother, Mrs. Gerald Hayden, who offers him a job and dowry as an enticement for him to marry Valerie. He storms from the house but is followed by Valerie who says she is unable to go against her mother's wishes but that she admires him for having refused her. A relationship develops and the two marry, although a former suitor, Sam Corwin predicts that the marriage will fail. As time passes, Luke Miller becomes a successful architect and refuses another offer of employment from his mother-in-law, however the influential and vindictive Mrs. Hayden uses her contacts in the banking industry to ensure that Miller is refused loans to help him build his business. He relents and accepts a position in Mrs. Hayden's company. Their daughter, Dani, is born but the relationship of the couple begins to deteriorate with Miller declining into alcoholism, and Valerie indulging in a promiscuous lifestyle. The marriage ends when Miller actually finds her having sex with another man and Mrs. Hayden insists she divorce him. Years pass and Dani eventually becomes her mother's rival for the same man. Back in the present, Dani claims that she was defending Valerie against attack, and when the case is brought to court, a verdict of justifiable homicide is ruled. An investigation into where to place Dani begins, but neither investigator Marian Spicer nor psychiatrist Dr. Jennings can persuade Dani to open up about her feelings. When Mrs. Hayden petitions for custody of Dani and she still refuses to reveal herself, Valerie reveals that Dani was trying to kill her, and that Rick was only killed when he tried to defend Valerie. Valerie returns home and commits suicide, and after her death Luke Miller tries to help Dani rebuild her life.
Although Robbins and the studio refused to acknowledge a connection, some publications such as Newsweek noted the similarities between the movie and the real-life case of Cheryl Crane, the daughter of actress Lana Turner, who in 1958 stabbed and killed her mother's boyfriend, Johnny Stompanato, claiming that she was defending Turner from attack. Newsweek wrote that the case seemed to have influenced the "foolish story" and described it as "a typical Harold Robbins pastiche of newspaper clippings liberally shellacked with sentiment and glued with sex". The Saturday Review criticized the script saying that it "somehow manages to make every dramatic line sound like a caption to a cartoon in The New Yorker.
