Grace Quinn is an Englishwoman living in rural Ireland. Isolated by religion and circumstance, she endures both an abusive husband and a strained relationship with her son, Martin, whose open homosexuality her husband refused to accept. After an act of desperation, reeling with doubt and denial, she seeks out her son in Dublin. Keith Ridgway \"affectingly renders the separate sanctuaries of mother and son . . .and lights the distance between them\" (The New Yorker).