The Scottish Highlands, 1848. Mary-Ann Macgregor considers herself fortunate. A married woman with five children and a comfortable home, her life is full of quiet contentment. It feels like an age since, at just seventeen, she married Ewan Macgregor, a Scottish blacksmith, for whom she felt affection but not love. In sorrow, shame and desperation she had hastily married a good man who deserved better. Yet, strangely enough, for fifteen years they have lived together quite happily. But when her son, Davey, befriends a new arrival to the village - Janet, who is poor but prepossessing - he sets in a motion a chain of events that leads to disaster. Harshly punished for a minor crime, Ewan and Davey are sentenced to exile in Australia, and the family face ruin. Mary-Ann is determined to keep her family together - whatever the cost - but her past is catching up with her, and soon her children will know the secret she has tried so hard to keep ...