1940s Dublin
Handsome widower Johnny Cassidy is out of work and lost as to how to look after his four children. Broken-hearted, he looks for the answer at the bottom of a bottle and it takes another calamity for him to realise that help sometimes comes from the strangest places.
With his family over the sea in Liverpool, it's Johnny's wife's spinster cousin who comes to the rescue. Nora's life is turned upside down by this brood of children and underneath the bustle of daily life, they all cherish secret dreams, some of which threaten to tear the family apart.
With Nora around, Ella Cassidy can be a teenager again, rather, while older brother Sean finds that music might be his salvation. But when he takes to the stage, it's the start of a journey that will take him far from home, and right towards the kind of trouble he thought he'd outran.