Impoverished Cornish girl Laura raises her son Charles alone after her husband returns from the First World War a damaged man and with the tuberculosis that claims his life. She gradually realises her son is a genius.

Charles joins the Navy as a coder and blossoms as he experiences both the possibility of death and the constant danger of a love that is as clandestine as his work.

The novel is a story of class, desire and two world wars. It is inspired by the boyhood and young life of the Cornish poet Charles Causley.