A year before the outbreak of the First World War, Charlie MacFell returns from university to Northumberland, to visit the farm where he spent an unhappy childhood and where his brutal father would subject young farm hands to vicious beatings on the hot cinder path.

Marriage to the beautiful but adulterous Victoria Chapman turns out to be a further humiliation for Charlie, but when he joins the army he discovers amongst the horrors of the Western Front a strength he never knew existed. Respected by his family and by his men on the battlefield, he finally finds true love with his wife's younger sister. Just as lasting happiness is within his grasp, fate seems poised to snatch it all away...