In the years after the Civil War Jo March (Saoirse Ronan) lives in New York City and makes her living as a writer while her sister Amy March (Florence Pugh) studies painting in Paris. Amy has a chance encounter with Theodore "Laurie" Laurence (Timothée Chalamet) a childhood crush who proposed to Jo but was ultimately rejected. Their oldest sibling Meg March (Emma Watson) is married to a schoolteacher while shy sister Beth (Eliza Scanlen) develops a devastating illness that brings the family back together.