Siona Llewelyn is the ruggedly handsome ferryman, with an eye for the ladies, whose days are spent rowing passengers across the River Swan. One day he hauls a young girl trying to commit suicide out of the river and so starts this tale of Siona's family - the loves and lives of his seven blue-eyed sons - in Sweyn's Eye, a mining town in post World War One Wales. The gossiping locals are unimpressed that Siona won't leave his wife be, making her pregnant with their eighth child. After the weary Emily gives birth to a longed-for little girl, tragedy after tragedy hits the family and each of the brothers struggle to cope in their own, vastly different, ways.