Despite the depression, the Richardsons enjoy a rewarding life on the Tasmanian coast in Harrisons Way a small, seaside community.

Mary Richardson has to deal with the grief of her friend Lily's death in childbirth, but looking into the newborn's eyes, she dares to hope that little Rowie's life will be happier. Love and romance bless Lily's eldest daughter Kathryn's life, when she meets Jim, an itinerant worker. But her happiness is tainted when she becomes the first victim of a brutal predator. Mary's daughter Frances also falls prey to these crimes. Can they find this man in time to spare the other young women in the community?

Thirty years later, and Frances and her husband live in Hillcrest View, the Richardsons family home.

It is here that a mother's worst nightmare occurs—the unsolved disappearance of her child Steven. A series of bushfires that threaten Harrisons Way makes the hot summer of 1964 even hotter. Are these the natural by-product of the hot Tasmanian summers or is it an arsonist at work?

In the days of a new millennium, Frances now faces life in a nursing home as she battles the scourge of dementia.

Susanne, her widowed daughter, has challenges of her own with a new beau, who may not be all he seems. Frances, despite her fleeting grip on reality, cannot let the past hurts go. What happened to her son?