Patricia is sixteen and pregnant. It’s nineteen-fifty-seven, and she lives in Southern Ireland.

She has been taken, by her parents, to Bessborough House, on the outskirts of Cork city. It’s a home for unmarried mothers, run by Catholic nuns, who are cruel and vicious in their treatment of the girls incarcerated there.

Her parents can’t cope with the shame and stigma of their neighbours finding out about their unmarried daughter’s pregnancy, Patricia is left there and told she can go home after the baby’s been adopted. A thought that rips her heart out.

She is in love with her baby’s father and hopes they’ll marry and bring up the baby together. Her parents have other ideas.

Life inside Bessborough is a harsh reality. The nuns are spiteful and bristle with hatred.

The girls are overworked and undernourished, and many mothers and babies will not survive. Others are sent to the local Asylum, never to be seen again. This is Patricia’s biggest fear, next to dying during childbirth.

Patricia’s baby is taken and given up for adoption by the nuns, without her consent.

Heartbroken, she is finally allowed home. She is told her baby’s father has abandoned her, but that’s a lie. He never knew she was pregnant.

Thirty years on, Patricia is a nurse in England. She’s divorced with two grownup daughters, who don’t know about their mother’s past.

A development forces Patricia to relive the pain and devastation but with unexpected results.