Laura Fountain is raised by her father Stephen, a Cambridge scholar who wasn't religious and raised his daughter the same way. Laura's step mother Augustina was raised a catholic in Bannisdale, but she denounced her faith upon her wedding with Stephen. When Stephen dies Augustina takes Laura to Bannisdale where a young skeptic lady is initially repelled by the heady atmosphere of Catholic ritual that greets her there. Laura also starts on a wrong foot with her father's Methodist cousins, but eventually, her attention is taken by a young Alan Helbeck, yet there are some invisible barriers which are hard to go across.
