Alfie's mum, Emilia, has been lying to him forever. It's only been the two of them in Ireland, but when Emilia's appendix explodes, she drops a bombshell: they have a family back in Australia, and she and Alfie are going to meet them. When Penny Bains opens the door of her Tasmanian farmhouse to a boy with an Irish accent claiming to be the son of her missing daughter, Emilia, her life is turned upside down. Alfie needs to know who his father is, but the residents of the tiny town of Beggars Rock and his newly found grandmother and great-aunts are all staying silent. As Alfie starts to uncover secrets that his family would prefer to keep buried, the one thing he does discover is that no one is willing to tell him the truth.