In a small American town in 1947, widowed Ruth Hartley, 37, and her friends Cora Miller, 31, and Elizabeth Gustafson, 28, have made a makeshift brothel out of Ruth's house, where they provide sexual services to men and women alike. When a priest and a nun who broke their vows to be together pass through town and learn about Ruth's house, they pay the women a visit to learn how to give each other the pleasure of physical love, while at the same time grappling with what the God they still want to serve thinks of their decision.