Writer Jo Devereux returns home to Wexford for her mother's funeral with very mixed feelings. After all, she hadn't seen Mrs D for years and for good reason. So when Jo finds herself agreeing to her mother's dying request to write a family history, her motives for doing so aren't clear even to herself. Family pride has caused Jo nothing but heartache and cost her Rory, the only man she ever truly loved. But maybe because her life as a sex columnist in San Francisco has become rackety and empty, and because a pregnant woman of thirty-eight needs to face her demons, Jo settles down to a long hot summer of excavating the past. In unearthing undreamt of family secrets of love and revenge in a time of war, of the conflict between happiness and duty, and even of a murder that has haunted three generations Jo begins to understand certain truths, not only about her mother and her grandmother, Peg, but also about herself and Rory, who is still lurking at the edge of her life. Could a reluctant mission to redeem the past actually offer the key to Jo's future?