1919 - When Phoebe Maynard - after her mother had died - found the old journal in the attic it reminded her of several things - of her early child-hood growing up in Spain, of her father's distress whenever she spoke of that country, and of her mother's long years of fretful ill-health once they had returned to their Oxfordshire manor house. Phoebe and her sister Lydia, had never understood why the 'land of nightingales' was such an emotive subject within the family, but when their father died it suddenly became clear. His will revealed that Phoebe and Lydia had a Spanish half-brother -Juan Rodriguez. It seemed that Juan was as shocked as they were by his foreign connections and was determined to have nothing to do with his English relatives - but the blood-tie was there.
As Phoebe and Lydia finally found a happiness of their own in England, the past constantly intruded on their tranquil lives. It was when young Holly, Phoebe's orphaned niece-by-marriage, came onto the scene that the two worlds met and exploded into an emotional turmoil that was to be made even more violent as Holly and Juan found themselves caught into the turbulence of the Spanish Civil War.