A romantic, historical novel set partly against the background of the first world war and partly in the 1930s. The citizens of Oakdale hail the Revd James Wortley as a prophet when he appears to predict the outbreak of the First World War but some turn on him when he takes a pacifist stand. As he battles with their opposition he also faces an inner conflict with loneliness and temptation. Two decades later, Heulwen Hughes, a young Welsh student teacher, sets out to trace her biological father. In the process she finds more than she was looking for.