The Butcher's Apprentice' is an intriguing story of one man's search for his identity and his yearning for a love he thought never existed.On his death-bed in hospital, Robert Kelly discovers a bundle of letters in a tattered blue chocolate box that his adoptive mother kept hidden for years in a wooden trunk under her bed. While reading them, Robert begins to unravel a series of dramatic events involving his adoptive parents, the local midwife and her daughter, who together aided an unmarried mother in concealing the birth of her baby boy, and further weave an intricate web of deceit in his illegal adoption.