Stanley McCormick is the brilliant but highly-strung son of one of the greatest inventors of the nineteenth century. Shortly after marrying Katherine, Stanley suffers a nervous breakdown, is diagnosed with a tormenting sex mania and is imprisoned in the forbidding mansion known as Riven Rock. For more than twenty years, Stanley has been confined to locked quarters within the luxurious Santa Barbara estate attended to by a staff of male nurses and a succession of psychiatrists, each anxious to apply the latest cure. Yet Katherine remains strong in her belief that one day he will return to her whole.