In 1968, in a small Nottinghamshire country churchyard, an embittered divorcee has a strange encounter with the apparition of a girl who claims to have died in an explosion at a nearby First World War shell-filling factory fifty years before. Unable to dismiss from her mind the girl's desperate plea for help, Dorothy Younger begins her search for further details surrounding the events leading to the girl's death, in the hope of finding the child left orphaned by the blast. Enlisting the help of veteran army officer Tim Mildmay, together they learn of one of the greatest wartime civilian tragedies, which claimed the lives of almost 140 workers. Dorothy and Tim grapple with the mystery of a young woman who apparently died in the explosion, but who was never officially there, and the survival of another who should have been blown to pieces, but was later discovered safely at home. Of those who died in the tragedy, there were no doubt many tales which could have been told of their lives and the events which led to their last, fatal, few moments on earth. Perhaps this is one of them.