This original fairy tale mixes folk tale elements in a new way, although not always keeping to traditional patterns. Isabel dreams of adventure and leaves home with a bad luck cake from her mother and a magic jewel box that can save her from death from her father. She arrives at a large house where she and the master's son, John, fall in love against the wishes of John's father, who assigns Isabel two impossible tasks to perform. Three little men from the jewel box perform these tasks, and the lovers are married. But a servant girl finds the box and whisks the castle the little men have created far away. Isabel, like countless folk tale heroines before her, must go in search of her husband. With the aid of a mouse, a frog and a hawk she retrieves her castle and John.