It has been three years since little Katri's mother left for Germany leaving her daughter behind in Finland, where she now lives with her grandparents. With Finland still under Russian domination, the inhabitants of these lands have had little or no news from the outside and no one knows if little Katri will again see her mother. To make matters worse, things in the Katri's grandparents' farm are not going well, the harvest had been a small one, their only cow had been killed by a bear and the family confronts great monetary problems. Katri wants to help and finds work in a neighboring farm; for a girl of hardly nine years of age the work of a farm is hard and tiring even with all of her enthusiasm and good moods, which is what keeps her standing.