It is war-time Britain and seduced by her brother-in-law, sixteen-year-old Frances becomes pregnant and is banished to a lonely farm. She gives birth to twins, a boy and a girl, whom her mother heartlessly wrenches from her. And when told her baby daughter has died, Frances is overcome with grief. After years of loneliness and yearning, Frances sets out full of determination to be reunited with her son, Michael, and tell him the truth of his birth.