August 1914, Clifton Park. Mrs Eloise Brannan refuses to believe there will be a war. For she knows what troubles and hardship it will bring upon her now grown-up children: headstrong Roderick and sweet Elizabeth, and their ever-patient cousin Dorothea. But war does indeed come, and Roderick is determined to fight. He secures a commission in France, leaving behind his pregnant wife, whose unhappiness at Clifton Park is no secret ...