Ireland 1945.
When Florence Kite finds letters and a newspaper cutting in her late mother's handbag, her whole world crumbles.
The cutting shows a badly injured man, Marcus Fanning, receiving a medal and an engraved cigarette case for saving six passengers when their ship was torpedoed in 1918.
Florence Kite never heard of Marcus Fanning. But the letters disclose a terrible secret. Marcus Fanning was her real father.
Confused and distraught, Florence goes looking but she can't find any trace of him. Because twenty five years ago Marcus Fanning vanished off the face of the earth.
Then Florence sees the cigarette case in a pawn shop window. A young lad Frankie Rowe found it in the attic of an old farmhouse he was clearing out. There was something else there too, and Frankie was going back to get it when the coast was clear.
They found Frankie's body in a ditch the next day.