Set in California's Salinas Valley, this powerful, and often brutal, epic tells the story of the rivalry between two brothers challenging for the affections of their farmer father.
The story follows the intertwined destinies of two families - the Trasks and the Hamiltons - whose generations helplessly reenact the fall of Adam and Eve and the poisonous rivalry of Cain and Abel.
When Cal Trask (James Dean), a wild visionary, discovers that his supposedly dead mother is running a nearby brothel, his already strained relationship with his brother, Adam (Raymond Massey) and father Aron (Richard Davalos) starts to irrevocably break down.