Jessica is based on the protagonist Jessica Bergman (daughter of Joe Bergman and Hester Bergman née Heathwood, younger sister of Meg) and her harsh life being a tomboyish figure in society.

 

Jessica substitutes for the ‘son’ figure in her family for her father Joe. By leaving school at the age of twelve, she was able to commit fully to helping him. On the other hand, Meg is the model daughter for Hester who has a long-term goal to have Meg marry Jack Thomas, son of the richest man in the district; George Thomas.
  Joe convinces George to hire Jessica as a tar boy as the Bergmans struggle financially. Thus, Joe and Jessica work every year at the Riverview Station. She befriends Jack and William D’arcy Simon whilst the tar boys mistreat her for being a girl. One day, they attack her with tar during their break to which Jack and William defend her. William declares a fight against the tar boys but falls underneath Jack’s horse that stomps on his head twice, causing brain damage.

 

William is then known has Billy Simple after being reduced to a gardener for the Thomas’. The Thomas women; Ada, Winifred, and Gwen taunt him. After taunting him for months, Billy murders them. He finds Jessica and she takes him to the nearest courthouse so Billy could be punished lawfully — not at the hands of angry farmers. They arrive at the courthouse at the same time as the farmers, as well as Jack. Ignoring the crime that had occurred, Jack takes Jessica into the courthouse to be treated for exhaustion. Billy is later sentenced to death.

 

Jack is enlisted into the war which panics Hester as Meg’s chances of owning the Riverview property through marriage was falling slim. Jack proclaims his love for Jessica and vows to marry her when he returns. Jessica later discovers her pregnancy but refuses to reveal the father. Hester schemes further and has Meg seduce Jack before he leaves to try and fall pregnant. She is unsuccessful but fakes it along with Hester’s plan of taking Jessica’s baby to play it off as Meg’s. Jessica is isolated into a tin shed as her baby grows. Hester covers the situation up with the excuse that Jessica had gone insane. Jessica is visited by Mary Simpson, an Aboriginal woman who she helped previously when her people were injured and sick, who gives her advice on childbirth. Days after Jessica had given birth to baby Joey (named after Joe), Joe stands up to Hester, about to strangle her to death, but suffers a heart attack and dies. At his funeral it is announced that Meg had given birth when in fact Hester had taken Joey like she had planned. Jessica screams and attacks Hester but is put into a mental asylum, wrongly convicted. 

 

There she meets a Jewish man, Moishe Goldberg. He is released shortly after contacts Billy’s lawyer, Richard Runche, to get Jessica out. After months of no letters from Jack that they had been sending back and forth, through Moishe, Jessica discovers that Jack had died at war. Richard is successful in getting Hester to agree to the terms that Jessica was to comply with upon her return; the Bergman property plus ten acres — and not being able to see Joey.
  Mary’s half-caste children have been taken away by the authorities but Runche frees her children in a court case.

 

After a few years, things had finally settled. Runche had unexpectedly passed away in his sleep and was buried, by Jessica and Mary, next to Billy’s grave stone. One afternoon, Jessica finds her dog dead and bitten by a snake. She takes the chance to shoot the snake. She successfully kills one of the snakes but is fatally bitten by the other. In the last moments of her life, Jessica takes the letter she had written for Jack, but never able to deliver, and the gold watch he left her before he died. The letter tells Jack about her pregnancy with his child. In the end, Mary discovers Jessica’s dead body sitting by Billy’s grave stone.