A complicated soap opera, Susan Slade features Connie Stevens as the title character, a naïve, virginal 17-year-old, raised by her parents in Chile, where her father Roger (Lloyd Nolan) works as an engineer. As the story opens, the family returns to their home in California on a luxury cruise ship. During the passage, Susan meets and falls madly in love with a climber, Conn White (Grant Williams), and the two promise to meet again after Conn climbs Mt. McKinley. She ends up pregnant, but Conn falls off of the mountain and dies. Her parents take her to Guatemala to have the child. The plan is that her mother Leah (Dorothy McGuire) will pretend that the child is hers upon their return to the U.S. a year later. Tragically, Susan's father Roger (Lloyd Nolan) suffers a fatal heart attack while they are abroad. Mother and daughter return with the baby to San Francisco, where the son of Roger's boss, Wells Corbett (Bert Convy), proposes to Susan. She is also pursued by Hoyt Brecker (Troy Donahue), an aspiring novelist whose father committed suicide after embezzling funds from Corbett's father. When Susan's baby is badly burned in an accident, she admits that the child is hers and prepares to deal with the consequences of the previous statements she had made to her two suitors.
