Though the Armistice has been signed and the guns silenced, the suffering has not ended. Many soldiers carry wounds that are still agonizingly raw and may never heal. Back in England but remaining in service, battlefield Nurse Bess Crawford has been assigned to a clinic for the severely injured - amputees, gas cases, and burns. Among these patients are Welsh soldiers who will return home to their valley utterly changed. No longer can they work at their old jobs mining coal. Though she does her best to raise their spirits, Bess knows the future will be difficult for them and their families when they are finally released. She fears that peace will do what war could not - take their lives. A few weeks after they return home, their officer, Captain Hugh Williams, writes to describe their despair, and his own at trying to save his men. Bess feels compelled to look into their situation, but the Army and the clinic can do nothing. When her reply comes back marked "return to sender," she decides to act. Due for ten days of leave, Bess quietly travels to that bleak coal-mining village in Wales. But she is too late. Captain William's sister tells Bess he has left the valley. Fearing that he intends to kill himself, she follows him to an isolated, storm-battered peninsula - a harsh and forgotten place where sinister secrets and death seem to go hand in hand. Deserted by her frightened driver in the middle of the night, Bess is stranded among strangers suspicious of outsiders. She quickly discovers these villagers are hiding something, and she's learned too much to be allowed to leave.