As war threatened in Europe, life in rural Templeard went on as usual. In this golden childhood, the futures of a wealthy farmer's five daughters seemed as solid as the stones of their farmhouse home, as hopeful as the green fields that stretched to the edge of their world. Flossie, Nora, Margaret, Ber and the baby Girlie were as close as girls could be. Their life was the nearby convent boarding school and the long summers on their father's farm. Looking back to those moments before tragedy struck, facing the event itself - the rape, the child born in secret - Nora, the girl with the voice of a bird, is at last free.