A 'literary dwarf' (Corban Walker) drops his memoirs on the desk of agent Handy Paige (Niall Toibin) - it tells of his mother and her lovers…
A beautiful 18 year old French woman, Bernadette (Anne Parillaud) leaves her home in Normandy, having failed to live up to her saintly namesake's reputation: she fails to correctly predict the date of the American landings and thereby becomes inadvertently responsible for her dear father' s death. She escapes France on a U.S. troopship but gets dropped off in Ireland, pregnant by one of the several soldiers on board. A married customs officer, Jack Kelly (Gabriel Byrne), takes pity on her and looks after her until the birth of her son, Francois, to be known as Frankie.