Growing up in conservative, postwar Australia isn't easy. For eight-year-old Sophie, who has just been told that she's a bastard, it seems that she lives in a world of secrets, unanswered questions and whispers. Who is her father and why did her mother never tell anyone who he was? With only her reclusive grandfather to raise her, and more than one neighbour expecting her to go off the rails like her mother - after all, apples rarely fall far from the tree - Sophie struggles to find her place in the world. In a time when experiences are shared around the kitchen table, over the back fence or up at the corner shop, Sophie learns that life is rarely simple, love is always complicated and sometimes it takes more than blood ties to make a family.