This is the haunting tale of Anastasia King who, at the age of twenty-two, returns to her grandmother's house in Dublin - the place where she grew up - after six years away. She has been in Paris, comforting her disgraced and dying mother who ran away from a disastrous marriage to Anastasia's late father, her grandmother's only son.
"It's a pity she sent for you," the grandmother says, smiling with anger. "And a pity you went after her. It broke your father's heart." Anastasia pays a severe price for the choice she made, one that deprives her of her family and makes her an exile in the place she once called home.