In the early 1900s a young and newly wed Leona Merrigan sets out from the Newfoundland community of Three Brooks to find a better life in Knock Harbour on the island's Cape Shore. After some happy years, tragedy strikes when she unwittingly brings disaster upon her home. Years later, William Cantwell, a politician tormented by regret, finds Leona in Knock Harbour, virtually alone but for her only child, a deaf girl named Dulcie. Both William and Leona come to focus on Dulcie's education as a way to mend their shattered lives. Meanwhile, a vindictive civil servant, Arthur Duke, lurks in the background. Soon, political events unfold which threaten the promising new future that Dulcie, William and Leona are shaping for themselves. In the end, Leona must face her troubled past and unearth the long-held secret which might keep her own and Dulcie's dreams alive.