Ireland 1945. Florence Kite finds a letter, and her whole world crumbles. She had never heard of Marcus Fanning, but the letter held a terrible secret: Marcus Fanning was her real father. Confused and distraught, Florence goes looking for him and discovers that, twenty-five years ago, Marcus Fanning vanished off the face of the earth.
When a young lad, Frankie Rowe, discovers something that belonged to Marcus Fanning in the attic of an old farmhouse, they find Frankie's body in a ditch the next day.