This is a warm family saga of three generations of heroines: Penelope, her daughter Olivia, and a young girl named Antonia, whom Olivia and Penelope have adopted as surrogate child. Confronted with her own mortality, Penelope returns to the Cornwall coast to come to terms with her son Noel, with Antonia's haunted young boyfriend Danus, and with the memory of Richard, the soldier who never returned.