Halfway through the First World War, a young English woman finds herself an unwed mother for the second time. She survives the bombing of London and emigrates to Canada to raise her children with a sequence of husbands. Her daughter falls in love with a country boy who is wrenched away by the Second World War, but returns safely to a humdrum suburban life and steady work on the railways. Their marriage is strained by his work absences, suspected dalliances, the problems of raising a family of girls, and the inevitable truces of middle age. As the women's lives merge and separate, their stories are interwoven, with the daughter's told in reverse order. We meet women who persist and find ways to adapt to the male dominated society. Through illogical love in the time of Edwardian patriarchy, to the stormy seas of poverty, the bite of the Canadian winter, and horrifying stillness of personal tragedy, it is the women in the story who stay strong. They do what mothers have always done, and shoulder the ultimate responsibility for their families. The women survive while the men come and go.