A historical novel about a world where a mother struggles to cope with the constrictions of her faith and the expectations of society, set against her own emotions and longings. Devout Catholic widow Katharine Machyn faces a hard life in the County Durham of James I's England, where simply to practise her religion is against the law. Trying to raise her young children in that faith makes it even harder, especially when her kind neighbours don't share her beliefs and seem to be leading her son Toby astray.
Then her beloved brother comes to visit, after a long absence. Nicholas has left behind the wildness of his youth-who better then to influence her son for the good, to help him stay on the right path?
But something about this new Nicholas doesn't feel quite right. Kate is made uneasy by his rigid demands on her and her family, and Toby takes an immediate dislike to him.
Yet when Nicholas offers to take Toby with him to the Northamptonshire household of the charismastic Robert Catesby, it seems to be exactly what her son needs. Kate sets her misgivings aside and gives way to her brother-only to find herself facing agonising choices that threaten to tear her family apart and overturn everything she holds dear.