When his first sexual encounter is with his Mormon missionary companion - a man - Heber Averil is first elated and then dismayed. His near-drowning the next day in the Loire river convinces him that here, on his mission to pre-World War II France where he has promised to serve the Lord, his very soul is in peril. He vows to never again touch a man, yet a year later he finds himself in the arms of an alluring Frenchman. As the years pass the struggle...