Raised in a large, loving Irish Catholic family, Valerie O'Connor is a sheltered and innocent young woman who comes of age in the 1950s. When, at age 18, she meets and falls deeply in love with Jack Marsh, a dashing veteran of the Air Force, little does she know that she is about to begin a relationship that is doomed from the start. Their many years of marriage are filled with Jack's drunken rages followed by morning-after remorse, and scenes of escalating violence witnessed by children too terrified to speak out lest they become Jack's next victims. A powerful story of a marriage begun with the best intentions but cursed by a legacy of violence that will have shocking consequences.