Based on Elizabeth Gaskell's classic Victorian love story. Independent-minded Margaret Hale moves with her parents to Milton, a manufacturing city in England's north. Compared to the bucolic south where she was raised, Milton stifles Margaret with industrial smoke and soot, and she takes an instant dislike to John Thornton, the ambitious and severe mill owner. But amid a workers2 strike and family misfortunes, Margaret begins to reconsider her sentiments.