When, one dark night in 1939, Theresa Nolan was brutally raped by three young men, it was the beginning of a series of tragic and dramatic events. For the youths were not criminals or vagrants, but the sons of wealthy and privileged businessmen. Pregnant, thrown out of her home by her bigoted father, Theresa vows a lifetime of vengeance on the men who had wrecked her future. Physically frail, but filled with a burning anger that fuelled her weak body, she determined that nothing and no-one was going to deflect her from her path of retribution, not even the gentle man who cared for her during her sickness, the man she eventually came to love. But there were others caught in the web of violence and deceit: Bernard Walsh and his brother Danny, and Eva, the midwife who had befriended Theresa and had seen her through her pregnancy. Above all, there were two children, bonded together from birth, whose lives were to play their part in the drama of Theresa Nolan.