When Laura Page returns to the remote Holderness village of Welwick, it is to try and discover the mystery of her mother, Susannah's early life. Now a local property owner in Hull, Susannah never speaks of her childhood, when she was brought up with the terrible stigma of bastardy—of being nobody's child. Born into poverty, living in a tiny laborer's cottage with her father, Susannah's mother had caught the eye of the local landowner's son. She was his one and only great love, but when she died giving birth to their daughter, Susannah, he could not acknowledge his child but had to watch her growing up in hardship. As the years passed and Laura had begin to be curious about her mother's past, would she ever be reunited with the father she had scarcely known?