Ellen Morris is confident, beautiful, bright and educated. Early in 1925, she accepts a teaching post in a rural, misty village. There the young city girl meets two men who will radically transform her. One is the handsome and respected Thomas Kane, a former gunman hero of the Troubles; the other a poor and brutal cottage-dweller, a shadowy and menacing presence. Ellen soons finds that she must conform to the traditions of the local community and toe the rural Irish line, live by the local codes. Beset by violence and turbulent emotion, Ellen rejects the hypocrisy of her religion and plunges into natural instinct, avenging what she sees as the sins of Mother Ireland and Holy Mother Church.