The year is 1938 and Maggie Bates, widowed for nine years and blissfully unaware of the explosive family secret threatening to tear her family apart, has returned to her roots. In the Derbyshire town of Castle Maine, the industrialist and entrepreneur, Silas Bradshaw, still casts his giant shadow. But Maggie, now a mature woman, determines to put her past firmly behind her and forge a new life for herself and her two children, Holly and Harry. Fuelled by a looming threat from across the channel, family tensions rise to boiling point and the tangled web of lies surrounding Maggie's true parentage is in grave danger of unravelling with shattering consequences.