England, 1925. Three-year-old Michael is the youngest of Norah and Brendan Kelly's five children, who are left orphaned by their mother and abandoned by their father in Ann O'Farrell's earlier work, Norah's Children. Michael, the "lost" child, is separated from his brothers and sisters. His adoptive father gives him away to an elderly spinster sister as financial insurance for her old age. Because of this decision, Michael grows up in a loveless household but is saved from loneliness and isolation by his best friend, Paul. With a Second World War looming, only the perseverance of Mary, his eldest sister, may help the abandoned boy reunite with the Irish family he does not remember in this coming-of-age novel.