Long before Doctor Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly became a fixture in the Irish village of Ballybucklebo, he was a young MB with plans to marry midwife Dierdre Mawhinney. Those plans were complicated by the outbreak of World War II. Assigned to the HMS Warspite, Surgeon Lieutenant O'Reilly soon found himself face to face with the hardships of war. Over two decades later O'Reilly and his younger colleagues still have plenty of challenges: an outbreak of German measles, the odd tropical disease, a hard fought pie baking contest, and a local man whose mule-headed adherence to tradition is standing in the way of his son's future. O'Reilly has prescriptions for whatever ails...until a secret from the past threatens to unravel his own peace of mind.