When thirtysomething Josie stumbles across some intriguing clues to the secret scandal that first brought her grandmother to Europe from her home in America's Deep South, just after the First World War, she decides to find out what really happened. Chucking in her job and ditching her burdensome boyfriend, she sets out for America in the hope of finding out more. Enlisting the help of one of her American cousins, not only does Josie discover some of what happened to her grandmother nearly ninety years before - not the romance that Josie had fantasised about, but instead a story of sadness, courage and hope - but she also finds for herself the happiness she has always thought she would be denied in life. Finally she breaks the destructive motif that has haunted the women in her family for three generations.