A Roman Catholic teenage boy in Glace Bay, Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia during the 1930s faces various growing-up problems: Should he become a priest? What should he do about the murder he witnessed, committed by a local cop and upstanding parishioner? And how far should he go with his girlfriend, who happens to be the murderer's daughter?

A young man, convicted of the murder of a clerk, who has been on death row for five years and now awaits his execution while his family desperately seek a reprieve.