When Daisy Buchan is 25, her beloved mother dies, and as she is reeling from this trauma, she is shocked to be told by her father that she is adopted - that her real mother was a poor young teenager from Cornwall. She does not know who her father is. Eventually Daisy finds out more about her mother, Ellen Pengelly, a farmer`s daughter from a remote Cornish village, and as the layers of her family history are stripped away Daisy is horrified by what she learns. She is taken on a journey back to the past, a journey that uncovers a gripping story of innocence corrupted, and a family torn apart by greed and misery ...