Joseph is a young doctor who returned to his hometown in the Mountain Province to bury his father, an Ifugao chieftain, who was killed during a tribal dispute. While there, he discovers his rich heritage and acquires pride in his being an Ifugao. Though the lure of a career in America remains strong, he is unable to resist the urge to help his village, which has resisted modern medicine and is now in the midst of a pneumonia epidemic and a civil war.